In the beginning
Our story is interesting. After discovering tamarillo products 10 years ago at a café whilst having lunch in Silverdale, we experimented with a number of tamarillo recipes and spent the next 5 years validating our products at weekly Farmers Markets throughout Northland. The demand was unprecedented so we surveyed the market and quickly learned that there were very few tamarillo products on retail shelves and the tangy taste of tamarillo was keenly sought after to complement salads, seafood, cheeses and meats.
For the Love Of Tams
When retailers approached us wanting to stock our products we realised there was an opportunity here for a tamarillo product to enter the artisan food market commercially, so we formed the NZ Tamarillo Cooperative Ltd, under the brand “For the love of Tams”, with five other local growers to provide us with a solid infrastructural base and to be sure that we had a consistent supply of the specific variety of tamarillo to produce the very best products.
Research
We then spent 18 months designing and building the infusing and extraction equipment required to extract the sweetest pulp from the fruit – the result is a delicious relish and a beautifully tangy and sweet vinaigrette dressing. We now distribute our products to 30 specialty food retailers throughout the North and South Island and export our vinaigrette to America and, following three successful visits to Melbourne, will (Covid willing) be in Australia by
the end of the year. And this all began with a tamarillo relish on a panini at a café in Silverdale.
