Olive Oil Flows Through Summer Food Show

The Specialty Food Association held its Summer Fancy Food Show from Sunday, June 25^th to Tuesday, June 27^th at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City. Established in 1952, the Association calls itself ​“a thriv­ing com­mu­nity of food arti­sans, pur­vey­ors, importers and entre­pre­neurs who bring craft, care and joy to the dis­tinc­tive foods they sell.”

The annual sum­mer show com­prises North America’s most exten­sive spe­cialty food and bev­er­age event, con­nect­ing con­sumers and ven­dors with over 180,000 prod­uct offer­ings from 2,400 exhibitors hail­ing from 50 coun­tries and regions, accord­ing to its orga­niz­ers. This year, the exhibitor cat­a­log listed roughly 270 com­pa­nies at the event who were offer­ing olive oil.

The gen­eral atmos­phere among these olive oil exhibitors proved upbeat and opti­mistic for the industry’s con­tin­ued poten­tial. Some, like Thomas Sheridan of DiAlfredo Foods, came to the show for their first time with the inten­tion of estab­lish­ing new busi­ness con­nec­tions, espe­cially with retail out­lets that claim a large port­fo­lio of regional stores.

Others, such as rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Argentina Olive Group, hoped to con­tinue pro­mot­ing their coun­tries’ flour­ish­ing pro­duc­tion capa­bil­i­ties. Julian Clusellas was able to boast that his farms have increased har­vest yields from the pre­vi­ous year’s four mil­lion kilos to this year’s fif­teen mil­lion.

While Clusellas explained that he plans to sell most of this har­vest in bulk to the United States, where buy­ers have found his qual­ity and pric­ing com­pet­i­tive, he said he also sells about 50,000 liters each year under the brand Valle de la Puerta domes­ti­cally in Argentina and to mar­kets in Western China. Argentinian rep­re­sen­ta­tive Francisco Gobbee fur­ther elab­o­rated that Argentina has ample nat­ural resources to expand its out­put, rang­ing from more land to irri­ga­tion capa­bil­i­ties.

An array of pro­duc­ers from Tunisia were rep­re­sented at the show to con­tinue pro­mot­ing their country’s com­mit­ment to bot­tling EVOO of an increas­ingly high cal­iber.

Representatives from the California Olive Oil Council turned their gaze toward pro­mot­ing edu­ca­tion to help build a mar­ket of more edu­cated con­sumers in the United States. They stated that demand is ris­ing, and in order to cap­i­tal­ize on this trend, the orga­ni­za­tion is work­ing on a vari­ety of con­sumer events. Membership in the coun­cil is also increas­ing, which the orga­ni­za­tion intends to par­lay into a part­ner­ship with the highly suc­cess­ful ​“California Grown” coali­tion.

Executive Director Patricia Darragh noted that California grow­ers are suc­ceed­ing in meet­ing an increas­ing demand thanks to advance­ment in farm­ing tech­nolo­gies, which have allowed olive trees to begin yield­ing sub­stan­tial crops in as lit­tle as two years from plant­ing. Darragh explained that she would like to see more plant­i­ngs, even as she acknowl­edged the trend among larger pro­duc­ers who have taken to aug­ment­ing their grow­ing but lim­ited out­put with imports to sat­isfy domes­tic needs. Currently, California pro­duces approx­i­mately four mil­lion gal­lons of olive oil annu­ally.

Dewey Lucero, owner of the California olive oil brand Wild Groves, embod­ies the suc­cess that California com­pa­nies have enjoyed in recent years. Originally from Corning, California, Lucero began his first olive oil com­pany with a $50,000 loan from his par­ents in 2005. After part­ner­ing with a larger com­pany, he was soon able to sell his stake and begin a new solo oper­a­tion, along with some of the grow­ers from his orig­i­nal project. Throughout the process, he learned the impor­tance of con­nect­ing with con­sumers, stay­ing real­is­tic and being patient.

A post shared by CA Olive Oil•Gourmet Food•Gift (@wildgroves) on Jun 27, 2017 at 4:42pm PDT

Though every olive oil exhibitor extolled their gen­uine belief in the olive oil industry’s future, many echoed the same con­cerns. There was hope for a reform in label­ing prac­tices, which cur­rently require bot­tles to show their con­tents’ coun­tries of ori­gin but do not pro­vide any method for describ­ing the pro­por­tions. Many cited con­sumer edu­ca­tion as a means of abet­ting this issue until fur­ther reg­u­la­tions are put in place.

Producers like Brenda and Nick Wilkinson of the South African olive oil brand Rio Largo lauded the con­ven­tion for bring­ing together a broad group of olive oil com­pa­nies that stood apart for their ​“authen­tic­ity” and devo­tion to their prod­ucts.

• Specialty Food Association


• Specialty Food Association