Retail chain LuLu Hypermarket has kept pace with the growing demand among its health conscious consumers seeking organic food products, including produce grown in farms in the country.

Only recently, LuLu participated in Mahaseel Festival, said Krishna Kumar R general manager, LuLu Hypermarket along D-Ring Road. The festival, organised by Katara-the Cultural Village, in collaboration with the Ministry of Municipality and Environments Agricultural Affairs Department, was aimed at supporting and promoting Qatars agricultural and livestock industry. But aside from supporting local farm produce, Kumar said LuLu is also sourcing most of the premium brands on healthy living from its international suppliers in the UK and the US, among other countries, to keep up with the growing demand from Qatar consumers. Nowadays, we are also promoting almost all organic and healthy products, especially in our new outlets like Al Messila and Barwa where we are keeping a large separate section for these items. Even in our D-Ring branch, we also keep almost all varieties of organic products as well as food items that promote a healthy lifestyle, he pointed out. Kumar said awareness campaigns on keeping a healthy lifestyle contributed to the growing demand for healthy options and has become a trend among Qataris and many expatriates. Demand for these products is a growing trend in Qatar due to increasing awareness on keeping a healthy lifestyle and choosing healthy options. Our customers are very health conscious hence it is part of our social responsibility to promote healthy living by responding to their growing needs, he stressed. Most expatriates who come to our outlets are looking for these healthy products but there is also a big demand from the Qatari market and they are also patronising many of these items, he further said. Speaking to Gulf Times previously, Qatar Culinary Professional chairman Baran Yucel said people in Qatar are now more aware about the health benefits and advantages of using organic produce. At the same time, he said there is a demand and potential growth for organic farming in Qatar. Citing the lack of organic plantation in Qatar a few years ago, Yucel said more organic farms are being established in the country. If there is no demand for organic fruits and vegetables, there wont be a second and third farm in Qatar. I am fully aware of the second farm and from what I understand, the third one is on its way, he said.

View original post here:

More people turn to organic food products - Gulf Times

Falling food prices are creating challenges for Tops Markets and Frank Curci, the supermarket company's long-time CEO, can't remember another time like it.

"This is the largest deflationary trend I've seen in my lifetime," Curci said in an interview Friday.

"Deflation doesn't make it any better to do our business. Our business has a decent amount of fixed costs," Curci said. "It comes at the same time some of your costs are increasing, like the minimum wage."

Most of the falling prices have been centered around meat and dairy products. Egg prices, for instance, have dropped about 40 percent to 50 percent over the past year, said John Persons, Tops' president. In recent months, vegetable prices also have been declining.

That decline is having a significant impact on Tops' revenues. Persons estimates that falling prices cut the chain's sales at stores that have been open for at least a year by $24 million during the final three months of last year.

To compensate, Tops has been trying to build up some of the more profitable portions of its business, including organic food and prepared foods. Tops' organic product sales, which now include about 3,000 different items, jumped by 33 percent during the last quarter, while its same-store prepared food revenues increased by 3 percent.

"I think there's significant room for us to grow," Persons said. "Customer buying habits are changing. They're looking for more natural and organic products."

That helped Tops, which regularly posts losses because of its heavy debt load from a management buyout, reduce its fourth-quarter loss by about 10 percent to $13.8 million, compared with a loss of $15.4 million a year earlier.

Tops' sales fell by 3 percent to $584 million from $602 million, with revenues from inside Tops stores dipping by 3 percent and sales it its 52 fueling stations sliding by 3 percent. Same-store revenues fell 2 percent because of falling meat and dairy prices, combined with lower sales funded by the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.

Tops executives said they expect the drop in food prices to end during the second half of this year.

Tops, which acquired six former Stop & Shop and Hannaford stores last year, said the performance of those supermarkets was weaker than company officials expected as they went through a rebranding process. Persons blamed the nearly $2 million loss at those stores on larger than expected promotions during the transition period, resulting in four of the stores breaking even while two lost money.

The supermarket chain, which has acquired 15 stores during the past two years, expects to purchase only one new store this year located within its Buffalo Niagara market and reduce its overall spending on capital improvements and acquisitions by more than half to between $20 million to $25 million.

"Right now, we're looking to put more of our free cash flow toward debt service," Curci said. Tops has nearly $875 million in total debt, including an $85 million note that will come due in 2018. Tops is hoping to refinance that $85 million in debt before summer, Curci said.

Tops also is reviewing its stable of 172 stores and potentially could sell two to four underperforming supermarkets, Curci said.

"We're pretty happy with our store base, but there's probably less than a handful of stores that we could take a look at and could close," he said during a conference call.

Read more from the original source:

Falling food prices create a challenge for Tops - Buffalo News

Multi-platinum and Grammy-nominated artist Jewel said she developed a mindfulness meditation practice on her own at a young age to help cope with a tough childhood, homelessness as a teen and even pitfalls in her music career.

"I just started habitually forcing myself to do what I call my 'anecdotal thought,'" Jewel told ABC's Dan Harris on his "10% Happier" podcast. "So when I would have anxious feeling, I would retract the thought, I would see what the lie was, what my brain was telling me and I would tell myself the truth.

"And the truth was," she continued. "I am capable of learning and I will learn more today, and that calmed my anxiety down and helped me re-wire and ... that started creating reliance."

Subscribe and listen to the "10% Happier" podcast on iTunes, Google Play Music, TuneIn, on ABC News Radio podcasts and under the "Listen" tab on the ABC News app.

Jewel, whose full name is Jewel Kilcher, is known for her soft, poetic hits such a "Who Will Save Your Soul," "You Were Meant For Me," and "Foolish Games," songs that dominated the radio airwaves in the '90s. Her debut album, "Pieces of You," sold over 12 million copies and became an inspiration for several other female artists.

She reinvented herself as a pop artist with her 2003 album, "0304," then as a country singer with her 2008 album, "Perfectly Clear." Her last album, "Picking Up the Pieces," was released in 2015.

Growing up in Alaska, Jewel was raised in a family of musicians. She said her mother and father would perform at hotels for tourists, but when she was eight years old, her parents divorced and she stepped in to sing with her father as a duo.

"I was probably the only fourth grader that went right from the elementary school to the bar," she said. "And I watched how people handled pain. I watched people use relationships, drugs, alcohol to try to numb and medicate feelings...and I was like, 'Im in trouble.'"

As a young girl, Jewel said she quickly realized she couldn't run from the pain and turned to writing down her feelings as a way to calm herself down.

"[Writing] was my first mindfulness practice," she said. "I noticed every time I sat down to write, I felt calmer, I felt less anxiety, and it took the edge off just enough."

"I had plenty of anxiety," Jewel continued. "But the anxiety lessened every time I wrote and later as I developed this practice of writing, it was like having breadcrumbs back to my real self... I was always able to see the truth when I wrote."

In her 2015 memoir, "Never Broken -- Songs Are Only Half the Story," Jewel goes into great detail about her tumultuous family upbringing, including that her father, a Vietnam veteran who she said suffered from PTSD, drank and became abusive after her mother left.

Jewel said her father, Atz Kilcher -- who she said gave her permission to publicly discuss his problems -- later got sober and they reconciled. She remains estranged from her mother.

At the age of 15, Jewel moved away from home and tried to start a new life for herself, what she dubbed her "happiness project." She put herself through school, attending a fine arts high school in Michigan on a vocal scholarship.

"I knew statistically kids like me end up repeating the cycles that they're raised by," she said. "So I knew statistically I was going to end up in a ditch or on a pole or on drugs or in an abusive relationship in short order, because that was the emotional language I was taught."

While at school, Jewel said she didn't have enough money to return to Alaska so she began hitchhiking across the country. She learned to play the guitar and kept writing along the way.

"I started writing lyrics about what I was seeing around me and 'Who Will Save Your Soul' was the first song I actually ever wrote. I wrote that when I was 16, as I was hopping trains and hobo-ing and street singing," Jewel said. "I noticed this idea of people wanting to be a victim and saying, 'Somebody else save me,' and I started asking this question, 'how do I save myself?'"

At age 16, Jewel said she started suffering from panic attacks. By the time she was 18, she was homeless and at one point, she said she became so sick from kidney infections she nearly died.

She said she also started shoplifting, until one day she had a moment of clarity.

"I was [looking] in the mirror in a dressing room, trying to steal a dress, and I looked at myself and I went, 'oh I failed. Im a statistic. I didnt beat the odds, at 15 I set out to not be a statistic, and three short years later my life came to a grinding halt,'" Jewel said. "So I went back to my - the word 'mindfulness' wasnt even around back then, but I went back to this idea of how can I ... re-wire my brain."

She said she went back to her journals and very consciously began monitoring her thought process that would lead to negative thoughts or lead her to want to steal. Jewel said that self-conscious exercise eventually inspired her to write another hit song, "Hands."

"I started watching my hands because your hands are the servants of your thoughts," she said. "If you want to see what youre thinking just watch what your hands are doing."

To deal with her panic attacks, Jewel said she came up with her own visualization exercises to help reduce her anxiety.

"I learned to do this meditation where I imagined I was on a very stormy ocean," she said. "Id imagine myself sinking through the ocean, allowing myself to relax, I would get calmer. I would notice the color of the ocean change. Id notice the taste of salt on my lips. Id notice the rays of sunlight coming in and the further I got down to the sandy floor, it got calm, it got tranquil by then, and I would look up at the stormy surface and it was in the distance."

Today, Jewel has turned many of the mindfulness exercises she taught herself over the years into what she calls "modules" on her JewelNeverBroken.com website, where she tries to help other people learn healthy mental fitness habits.

Although she said she'll never stop writing music, Jewel said she's "not as interested in touring" because she wants to work on building her mindfulness platform and being a mother to her five-year-old son, Kase.

"I dont want to look back on my life and go, my art is my best art," she said. "I want my life to be my best work of art."

Subscribe and listen to the "10% Happier" podcast on iTunes, Google Play Music, TuneIn, on ABC News Radio podcasts and under the "Listen" tab on the ABC News app.

View post:

Singer-songwriter Jewel used self-taught meditation to help cope ... - ABC News

Unless you've been living in a cave the last few years, someone has no doubt recommended meditation to you. With top entrepreneurs swearing by the practice and a parade of articles suggesting mindfulness for everything from stress reduction to better concentration, meditation is undeniably hot.

Is it also science-backed? With its religious origins, spiritual cast, and mysterious mechanisms, to the skeptically minded meditation can appear like just another dubious self-help craze.

But if you're not the type to spend time aligning your chakras or harmonizing your aura, be aware that meditation doesn't need spirituality to sell itself (though, of course, that's a fine reason to start a practice if you're so inclined). A huge body of research has found that meditation has very real effects on your brain.

The many benefits of meditation, in other words, are thoroughly backed by science and can be seen plain as day on a brain scan, a fact Buffer writer Belle Beth Cooper delved into in depth on the startup's blog. Her complete post is well worth checking out if you want a deep dive into how meditation physically alters your brain, but here are a few highlights.

Meditation has been shown to measurably reduce anxiety. How does it accomplish that? Cooper explains:

There's a section of our brains that's sometimes called the Me Center (it's technically the medial prefrontal cortex). This is the part that processes information relating to ourselves and our experiences. Normally the neural pathways from the bodily sensation and fear centers of the brain to the Me Center are really strong. When you experience a scary or upsetting sensation, it triggers a strong reaction in your Me Center, making you feel scared and under attack.

When we meditate, we weaken this neural connection. This means that we don't react as strongly to sensations that might have once lit up our Me Centers. As we weaken this connection, we simultaneously strengthen the connection between what's known as our Assessment Center (the part of our brains known for reasoning) and our bodily sensation and fear centers. So when we experience scary or upsetting sensations, we can more easily look at them rationally.

Another benefit of meditation is improved memory recall. It turns out this might be a side effect of another positive effect of mindfulness--better concentration and focus.

Researcher Catherine Kerr "found that people who practiced mindful meditation were able to adjust the brain wave that screens out distractions and increase their productivity more quickly that those who did not meditate. She said that this ability to ignore distractions could explain 'their superior ability to rapidly remember and incorporate new facts,'" writes Cooper.

These changes are only the tip of the iceberg, however. Specific types of mediation have been shown to increase creativity, for instance, while a mindfulness practice can also help turn back on the clock on aging brains. Get all the details in Cooper's post.

If all this has convinced you that meditation is less self-help fad and more ultimate life hack, how do you get started? It's less difficult than you probably imagine. As Cooper points out, there are tons of apps like Headspace to help, and you only need a few minutes of meditation every day to reap rewards.

Read the rest here:

Neuroscience: This Is How Meditation Changes Your Brain for the Better - Inc.com

The Harvard Divinity School Augmented and Virtual Reality Collective hosted an event Thursday featuring a series of speakers and demonstrations examining the ways in which technology can influence neuroscience and meditation.

At the event, speakers presented medical and scientific research related to the mind. Dr. Jeffrey D. Rediger, a Harvard Medical School professor and Medical Director at McLean Hospital, described studying a hundred cancer patients who had experienced spontaneous remission.

He said the trends challenged his skepticism of spiritual and psychological healing methods.

In medicine, were embarrassed by them, we call them flukes. After a while, after you talk to these people, you start to see this pattern, Rediger said. I think these things happen outside of what we understand about the physical laws of nature.

MIT research scientist Andreas Mershin spoke about the importance of nurturing curiosity.

If we sustain it, if we ask better questions, we start becoming a much more powerful community and much more powerful individuals, Mershin said. Questions are more powerful than answers.

Also at the event, Baruti KMT-Sisouvong, director of Cambridges Transcendental Meditation Program, evaluated the role of transcendentalist thought on the individual and society.

Technology demonstrations following the speaker portion of the event. They included demonstrations of When We Die, a virtual reality program designed to prompt contemplation of mortality, and Chi, an app designed to provide a virtual reality simulation of Tai Chi.

The Virtual Reality Collective hosted the group Consciousness Hacking, a Cambridge-based association of thinkers at the event. Consciousness Hacking is a collective that aims to explore technology as a pathway towards psychological, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing, according to the groups website. Their research focuses on technology and neuroscience.

This is hopefully a community that lives their questions, which is totally exciting and exactly what I hoped for, said Adam H. Horowitz, a leader of Consciousness Hacking and a co-organizer of the event.

Those goals are similar to the work that the Augmented & Virtual Reality Collective hopes to tackle.

I came to HDS essentially to ask the larger question of what kind of world we are building in this technological landscape, and how can we build for well-being and really the whole human being, said Tim L. Gallati, a student at the Divinity School and founder of the Augmented & Virtual Reality Collective.

Staff writer Jordan E. Virtue can be reached at jordan.virtue@thecrimson.com.

Follow this link:

HDS Event Explores Overlap of Meditation, Technology, and Medicine - Harvard Crimson

For Americans of all political persuasions, the last few months have been a nervous, unsettling time. Tensions that were buried under the surface are out in the open. Scary possibilities that seemed remote now feel plausible. If you're a news junkie or the sort of person who gets into arguments on social media, it can be hard to fall asleep, knowing the next breaking story or tweet could mean another major upheaval.

On the other hand, it's a great time to be a company that helps people deal with their unwanted anxiety. The week after the presidential election, Calm, the maker of an eponymous guided-meditation app, saw its rate of sales spike by more than 50 percent, according to co-founder Michael Acton-Smith. "There are a lot of very anxious, stressed people out there," he says.

He used to be one of them. Calm is Acton-Smith's third startup. His first was the online retailer Firebox.com. His second, Mind Candy, made a video game that had 80 million registered users.* Despite the success, Acton-Smith found it hard to relax. He suffered from fatigue, headaches, and "the whirring mind of an entrepreneur, waking up at 4 a.m., thinking of all these things."

Acton-Smith had long had a vague sense a mindfulness practice was something that might help him. With a friend, Alex Tew, he had even purchased the domain Calm.com in 2011 with plans to start a digital content business around mindfulness; Tew was an avid practitioner. But it wasn't until 2014 that Acton-Smith, during a long sabbatical, finally dove into the literature on meditation and began practicing it himself.

Once he experienced the benefits firsthand, he was all in. He joined Smith in San Francisco, where they set out to create products that offered the benefits of simple mindfulness training--restful sleep, improved focus, relief from stress--without the hippie-ish spiritual or cultural trappings that sometimes put people off.

Calm's core product is The Daily Calm, a 10-minute guided meditation on the app led by Tamara Levitt, the company's head of content, who has been studying various mindfulness practices for more than 25 years. Each day's meditation emphasizes a different aspect of mindfulness. After much debate, Acton-Smith, Tew, and Levitt agreed the meditations should only be available for that day and then disappear.

It turned out to be a crucial decision, Acton-Smith says. The offering encourages users to adopt Calm as a true daily habit, rather than stockpile the lessons for hypothetical later use like those back issues of The New Yorker on your nightstand you tell yourself you'll read someday. The idea of disappearing content also nicely echoes the mindfulness principle of acknowledging a thought and then letting it go. (Calm now archives a small number of its most popular Daily Calms.)

Without raising any outside money, Calm has become "very profitable," says Acton-Smith. It booked $7 million in revenue in 2016--app subscriptions cost $12.99 per month, or $60 per year--and anticipates more than $20 million this year. More than 8 million people have downloaded the app, and while some content themselves with the limited free offerings, "I've been amazed how comfortable people are paying" for the premium subscription-only tier, he says.

Besides the Daily Calm, the company's offerings include nature scenes and soundscapes, and "Sleep Stories," short, soporific tales read in a lulling voice. There's a Calm coffee-table book, and eventually Acton-Smith plans to do apparel and possibly even a Calm-themed hotel. He believes there's an opportunity to build a brand that will be "the Nike for the mind," likening the public awareness of meditation today to the state of exercise in the 1960s, before the jogging and aerobics fads. "I think we're right at the start of a new wave that's developing around mental fitness," he says.

It only helped, Acton-Smith says, when a competitor, Headspace, raised $30 million in 2015. Prior to that, he says, investors regarded mindfulness as a niche interest. Now, "People realize this is not niche. This is extremely mainstream." That said, Calm isn't eager to follow suit: "We're quite excited about continuing to grow under our own steam," he says.

Acton-Smith is an avid Calm user himself and reports much improved sleep since his Mind Candy days. A regular meditation practice is an asset to anyone doing a startup, he says. "It helps smooth out the huge highs and crushing lows that come with being an entrepreneur. No one wants to follow a leader who's screaming one minute and stressed and upset the next."

Of course, it's partly thanks to such a leader that Calm has become so popular since November. It could be a very profitable four years.

*Correction: Owing to a transcription error, the original version of this story said Moshi Monsters had 18 million registered users, rather than the correct number, 80 million. This story has also been edited to reflect the timing of Michael Acton-Smith's purchaseof Calm.com and his role at Mind Candy.

Read the rest here:

This Meditation Startup Is Turning Stress Into Profits - Inc.com

By Jayam Anantharaman

Human beings are the only species in Gods creation who make an issue out of nothing. Animals take life as it comes, but when man fails to do a certain thing or to possess certain things, he gets angry and slips into a depression. An individuals decline begins with desire and ends in misery. To keep the mind happy, we have to learn to be content with minimum wants.

Krishna said in the Bhagavad Gita, From attachment desire, from desire anger, from anger infatuation, from infatuation, aconfused mind that results in loss of reason and leads one to ruin. Gradually, by rearranging your priorities, you experience peace and calm. Bringing the mind under control is not a one-day exercise. It takes time to get into the habit. Meditation also helps the mind to concentrate and enables you to achieve great results.

Like meditation, music, too, has a tranquillising effect. Those of us who perform arduous physical or mental work will benefit by listening to good classical music or bhajans early in the morning before starting the workday. Good music is atonic; it has a healing effect.

People suffering from digestive disorders, diseases of the nervous system and backache can obtain great relief by listening to soothing music.

Likewise, by submitting yourself to natures grandeur watching a sunrise or sunset in the mountains or by a beach, or sitting near a waterfall you feel both ennobled and humbled. The Divine makes its presence felt in our lives, saving us from possible decline.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Read this article:

Meditation, music heal - Economic Times (blog)

Some people become vegetarians because they love animals. Some, as comedian A. Whitney Brown put it, because they hate plants.

But vegans are committed. Not only do they not eat food that harms or kills animals, some dont even want food that inconveniences animals.

Like honey. Hardcore vegans will not eat honey because, as Noah Lewis of vegetus.org puts it, the simple fact is that the bees are enslaved. Similarly, some vegans will not eat sugar because, while it comes entirely from a plant, some sugar is whitened by using bone char, which comes from animals.

Although the vegan diet lacks in meat, dairy and egg products or because of it the diet can be better for you than that which the standard American eats. In 2009, the American Dietetic Association took the position that vegetarian and vegan diets reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer and diabetes, and lead to lower cholesterol and blood pressure.

It can be healthy, but there are some things to watch out for when on a vegan diet: You have to make sure to get enough protein and vitamin B-12 and calcium, iodine, vitamin D, iron, zinc and n-3 fatty acids.

Fortunately, a well-balanced vegan diet provides all of these essential nutrients, though you may want to take vitamin B-12 supplements, just in case.

Still, cooking a well-balanced vegan diet can be difficult, at least if you want to stick to what most Americans think of as normal ingredients. Many vegan recipes attempt to re-create meatless versions of familiar meat-based dishes, and to do so they rely on such potentially off-putting ingredients as vegan chicken, egg replacements and nondairy cheese.

Other recipes use soy products such as tofu and tempeh for their protein, and it is one of these that I tried first in cooking a vegan diet for a day.

Mee goreng, which is a type of stir-fried noodles, is popular street fare in the Philippines. When I have had it before, it always had meat in it, usually chicken or shrimp or both.

But then I came upon a vegan recipe for it using tofu, and tofu fans are sure to be instantly hooked.

If they like spicy food, that is. As with a lot of street food, mee goreng usually packs a kick. If you want it milder, simply trim down or eliminate the amount you use of sambal oelek, the all-purpose Indonesian and Malaysian ground chili paste.

Also, as is the case with much street food, mee goreng tends to be a little oily. The recipe calls for 5 tablespoons of oil for four to six servings; I got by with four tablespoons, but that is still a quarter cup of oil.

Do you need it? Yes. The oil brings the dish together, from the spicy sambal to the faintly bitter bok choy to the sweet sauce made from equal parts of soy sauce, brown sugar and molasses.

The tofu, which has the amazing ability to soak up all the flavors in which it is cooked, serves as a protein-rich punctuation to the meal.

For my next dish, I dispensed with the tofu and received my protein in the form of garbanzo beans, which are also known as chickpeas.

Indian-style vegetable curry with potatoes and cauliflower (that name seems a little over-descriptive to me) is another spicy dish. I like spices; sue me. If less fiery food is more your style, you can use a mild curry powder (but I wouldnt use much less) and leave out the serrano chili.

This dish benefits greatly from the mutually complementary flavors of potato, cauliflower, garbanzo beans and curry.

A bit of tomato paste and a cup of coconut milk make it deeply satisfying, yet it is so healthful that youll practically pat yourself on the back for eating it.

It is the kind of dish that calls out for basmati rice; if you have it, use it.

Finally, I made a vegan version of one of the least vegan dishes I could think of, pancakes.

Pancakes pretty much need eggs, milk and butter. If you try to make them from just flour, water, sugar, salt, baking powder and a little oil, youll wind up with paste.

Or so I thought. But then a colleague passed me a recipe for vegan pancakes that she swore was excellent. And she was right.

I dont know how this works.

I dont understand how they hold together without becoming slightly sweetened hardtack. Im guessing the oil has something to do with it, but we are only talking about a single tablespoon for 10 smallish pancakes.

These vegan pancakes are fine the way they are, but I incorporated a couple of additions suggested by my colleague: I added two tablespoons of soy milk (almond milk would also do) and a teaspoon of vanilla, just to make the pancakes even better.

They are a perfect foil for maple syrup. And maple syrup doesnt inconvenience any animal.

See the article here:

The vegan diet meatless masterpieces | Food | theeagle.com - Bryan-College Station Eagle

Footwear News

13 Stylish Shoes That Are Completely Vegan Footwear News Shopping vegan and being on-trend while doing it can be a real challenge. Most fashion-minded brands favor the use of leather on soles or as lining, making it difficult to find shoes that are completely made without animal products. Luckily, we ...

See the rest here:

13 Stylish Shoes That Are Completely Vegan - Footwear News

Cinnaholic, the cinnamon roll-serving vegan bakery chain, is looking to expand into other cities, which will include Austin. The California-based confection shop focuses on customizable vegan rolls with 20 different frostings (banana cream, cake batter, maple, orange), and 22 toppings (brownie bites, coconut, marshmallows, jam, pie crumble). It also serves up vegan cakes, brownies, cookies, and cookie dough.

After its two Dallas location, Austin was naturally the next step, according to Daryl Dollinger, Cinnaholics president of franchising. The company is currently scouting locations in South and Central Austin, as well as around campus. Its aiming to nail down an address or open by the end of 2017.

Cinnaholic was founded in 2009 in Berkeley, California by Shannon and Florian Radke, who appeared on Shark Tank. There are 13 bakeries right now in America, with two in Dallas. For its expansions, its looking to franchise into other states as well, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere in Texas.

See the original post:

Vegan Cinnamon Roll Bakery Chain Eyes Austin Expansion - Eater Austin