The story of OFLORE’s fermented lemonade begins with restaurateurs Oumou Keïta and Hugo Ferran’s search for a signature beverage for their café MAISON OFLORE, back in 2019. The pair developed a recipe, and the delicately effervescent beverage has been flying off the shelves of the Plateau Mont-Royal bistro since its launch in November 2023. Fermented lemonades are a homemade delicacy in several countries, including Finland and France. In the latter, “citronnade” refers to still lemonade while lemonade refers to sparkling lemonade. The desire to make this healthier (due to its decreased sugar content) lemonade available to a wider consumer base motivated the entrepreneurs to optimize the production process and prompted them to seek technical support from the Consortium RITA’s Food Product Development Laboratory (FPDL).
Behind this successful collaborative project lie Keïta and Ferran, the co-founders of Limonades OFLORE with a strong vision for a unique beverage, as well as Shuyi Shen and Lichen Yang, passionate Food Science students from McGill University. The trainees applied their knowledge and developed new skills under the guidance of Dr. Amanda Waglay, the FPDL's esteemed Project Manager, and the supervision of Dr. Salwa Karboune, the Consortium RITA’s Scientific Director and Associate Dean (Research) at McGill University’s Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Together, they embarked on a partnership marked by rigorous research, creative problem-solving, and pursuit of quality.
The road from small batch preparation in MAISON OFLORE’s kitchen to a larger production capacity, enabling the company to reach a wider market posed a series of unique challenges. The first phase of the FPDL’s mandate included a comprehensive literature review conducted by Shen which was crucial in identifying promising avenues. Although Keïta’s background as a biologist was beneficial during initial in-house testing, further exploration was necessary. The Consortium RITA team navigated the complexities of the scale-up design to allow larger production volumes that stayed true to their artisanal roots. Their contributions proved invaluable in establishing key recommendations to optimize process parameters, ensure product consistency, and uphold high quality standards.
Furthermore, the infusion of plants posed its own set of challenges, requiring meticulous experimentation to balance aromas. Through iterative testing and refinement, the team adapted the workflow to mitigate the different characteristics of each infusion by stabilizing the starting material. Microbial monitoring throughout the fermentation process and storage also proved to be very insightful, most notably to study homogeneity between batches and to assess shelf-life.
Throughout the project, Limonades OFLORE benefited from the Consortium RITA’s funding of the project, in addition to expertise from McGill University. The Consortium RITA is supported financially by the Ministère de l’Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l’Alimentation du Québec (MAPAQ).
The culmination of these efforts is evident in the product line and the constant addition of new points of sale. OFLORE’s lemonades are currently available for purchase in over 30 locations, a number which the team expects to double by the end of the year. You can get your hands on the beverage and its probiotic potential by visiting MAISON OFLORE, LOCO grocery stores, Arhoma bakeries, Le Petit Dep, the Montreal Botanical Garden, or the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
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