Building an Emerging Olive Oil Brand From Grove to Global

0:03Pepper Gross:Welcome to the Brand Alchemist podcast, where we uncover the magic and mystery of how some of the world's most sought after and newest brands were started and continue to evolve. I'm your host, Taja Dockendorf, founder and creative director of Pulp & Wire, a CPG branding, marketing and launch agency. I'm also an investor in emerging brands and own a few of my own as well. Over the last 18 years, I have worked with, created for, and grown hundreds of companies in the CPG space, like Ryan's Snacks, Allagash Brewing, Ocean Spray, Petco, and many more. Now, here's today's episode.

0:44Pepper Gross:Pepper and Camillo, welcome to the Brand Alchemist podcast. I'm really excited to have you both on today to talk about Lydalula, your olive groves, the regenerative farming, the partner farms that you have going on in Italy, and just the connection between Maine and Italy and where you all are in your lives and where you work from is fascinating. But today, let's talk about olive oil. Camillo is the co-founder of Live Alula and Pepper, the CMO. I'm very happy to have you both on today. So welcome. Thank you so much for having us. We really, really appreciate it. Such a pleasure to be on.

1:19Camillo Franchi Scarselli:Thank you so much.

1:21Pepper Gross:Yes. So Camillo, First question I'm going to give to you. Let's talk about how it all started because this is your co-founder. It's a father-daughter team and how you started Laibelula. But bring it back to the beginning. Where did your background lead you to where you are today and the farms and everything amazing that you're doing?

1:39Camillo Franchi Scarselli:Thank you for that question. Honestly, my background is quite far away from that thing. But I moved from Milan to Rome, nearby Rome, actually, where we are having the Groves. about 17 years ago. And immediately I was lost and loved for the magnificence of the olive trees. And my co-founder, Julia, which is also my daughter, was studying in the U.S. So we had this fantastic connection to try to find out something that could merge Italy and the U.S. And then we started to work with Pepper. And that's why comes Maine. And Maine is a fantastic country, which I love so much. So it's a fantastic connection.

2:27Pepper Gross:Before you even got into, so you had a career prior to getting into your love of olive oil and the farms. What drew you to your first aha moment when you were like, this is what I need to be doing and olive oil farming?

2:40Camillo Franchi Scarselli:The first surprise for me, not being a native there, was seeing that all those magnificent groves were mostly abandoned. We're only one hour away from Rome and many people has not the time and longer to feed, to preserve and work with the trees. We have also some trees which have more than 200 or 300 years of life. So it would be a very, very pity thing, a very sad story to abandon and let those trees maybe be any longer productive. So the storytelling of Libello is all coming from that fact. do it again, and creating a collective farm, speaking a lot with the friends, with the people that live around, and try to find out the new energy to restore a regenerative agriculture, producing oil, actually, which is a kind of gold thing.

3:47Pepper Gross:So when you started, and Pember, maybe I'll ask you this question too. So you probably started with one olive grove and then it grew from there. And different partner farms, I'm sure, would come to you and ask for your help, especially since you do so much in regenerative farming to bring these olive groves back to life. How many farms are you working with now? How did that growth happen? Yeah, Camilla, if you want to answer this one, I know. Yeah, it's been really special. I think when we first started, I think Camillo can correct me, but I think the Giardinetto was perhaps one of our first groves.

4:23Pepper Gross:And then it's grown more and more since then. And, you know, Camillo is from a different part of Italy, but he, you know, discovered this region. And he just was, as he said, kind of just enchanted by the beautiful people, the beautiful scenery, the groves, the nature. but it was just so sad seeing these groves abandoned and people just not able to economically upkeep them, especially with the growing environmental challenges that, you know, everywhere in the world is facing. But we've definitely been facing in our area, Libela's area of Italy, where we have frosts that come later in spring and freeze and kill off the olive buds.

5:03Pepper Gross:And we have really, really dry, hot summers, which make, you know, we don't get enough water. And so all of these things are contributing. So people who've had these groves for generations couldn't afford to upkeep them anymore. And it's just so sad and something with, you know, probably a lot of land and area in the world, but with olive trees, if you don't take care of them, they're very susceptible to bugs and diseases. And once they start, they can spread across many groves very quickly and really just decimate areas. So that was also really sad seeing that happen. So Camilla was like, you know, what can we do?

5:37Pepper Gross:How can we bring together all these small groves and bring them together as one kind of collective so we can pool our resources, our knowledge, use, you know, he's, we have a solar well, we have, you know, technology that works with the soil testing how dry or wet it is. we put the special soil on the leaves. It's like a clay that's a natural pesticide. So we don't use any chemicals or anything like that. Yeah, so Camilla started having these people come up to him and say, hey, could you take a look at our grove? Try the oil that we've made before. Could we be part of Lubella? So Camilla, how many groves or trees do we work with today?

6:18Camillo Franchi Scarselli:Yes, we started, you said perfectly, the Giardinetto, the friends, the new friends that we have here because the new name for that is Honeymoon Grove. Sentence from Chris, at least with us since last October. We actually, we started with only 80 trees and now we have something around 3 ,000 trees to work with. And so we are quite happy because we made a kind of protocol to be followed by all the friends, members of the collective. And I think that we're now facing a kind of near stage. The new stage that will be probably the stage for the future is that now we have people that really could not believe that would be worth it in any ways, economically also, but mostly in personal and entrusting their own history, the history of the family.

7:20Camillo Franchi Scarselli:So it's really part of the place that we are living. It's also part of Rome. The oil is really part of the civilization of the ancient Rome. So now we are, I was saying, changing a little bit the storytelling among us because people at the beginning were just saying, okay, I give my trees in the collective. Now they want to do more. So we are now going to be competitive to the market. That was not a deal in the beginning.

7:54Pepper Gross:Well, I know extra virgin olive oil is definitely a competitive market, but as I think we all know, and probably most of the people listening, all olive oil is not created equal. There is lots of bad olive oil out there, And there's lots of absolutely amazing liquid gold olive oil, as you said, Camilla. So one thing that I know that you are doing is you're meeting these farmers, generational farmers, whom maybe have let their groves decline because they didn't have the financial resources or the ability to keep their olive groves healthy to be able to produce olive oil. So one thing that you're doing is you're coming in and you're not only helping them bring their groves back to life, but you're also introducing biological regenerative farming.

8:36Pepper Gross:so you're helping them not only create, you know, bring their growth back to life but do it in a regenerative way so that the soil will be healthier and the you know, the bio of the soil is just going to be overall better for olive production and honestly make a much better olive oil in the end. What are some of those things that you do initially with a grove when they say, help us, we need your help? What are some of the things that you do to help them get to that point where you're like, great, you're in a good space now, let's start harvesting your olive oil?

9:04Camillo Franchi Scarselli:Well, for the first The first point is just to not let the trees being abandoned, but then starts the meetings with the farmers and the families that we have around and saying that we absolutely need to try to do it, not using what seems to be so obvious, but it's not. But the climate change made so many movements in all directions. For example, the average production of an oil tree now is probably 50 % lower than in the past. So the response in the last 20, 30 years was, as Pepper was saying, the use of pesticides and biological chemicals things. And that was another kickoff for the trees because maybe they did good for some years, but then at the end, the heavy use of chemicals was a disaster for the trees.

10:11Camillo Franchi Scarselli:So we definitely spent so much time saying, no, we have to let the nature do what she is capable to do. Let the trees do by itself. This is one of the sentences that we are used to use. And then it starts work for each family, for each grove, each member of the collective. is a different thing because obviously the trees have different ages, places. So the second thing is doing very heavy analysis. I don't know if it's correct in English. Important analysis to know the soil, even to be sure that there is no last chemicals in the soil. So it's quite a long story. It's a fascinating thing that never ends.

11:06Pepper Gross:Well, regenerative farming is not an overnight process. It is a long process to get the, you know, the fruit of the olive trees to where you want them to be to then be able to produce the best olive oil. But actually, that does raise a question because you're working in such a small footprint, just 45 minutes or so from Rome in this town that you love, helping these local farmers in this area. Are they all the same type of olive? Because I'm assuming that with the different groves, they're all at different stages of production and they're ready for creating olive oil. Do you pool your olives together or do you have each farm create their own olive oil as part of the collaborative?

11:44Camillo Franchi Scarselli:Thank you for that question. I think we could speak about that matters for five hours. We do blends. We blend the oil because one of the most fascinating thing is that in Italy, we have more than 170 different kind of olive trees. And in our region, we have about 40. So we select the typical olive. And in the ears, we change it a little bit, the use of the blend, because, you know, the quality of the oil comes from the bitterness and the spiciness. That could be for someone not used to the good oil, strange. And so it's also kind of an experiment developing also to year by year, developing the blend we like.

12:39Camillo Franchi Scarselli:It's just, it comes from many talks, many meetings, testing and enjoyable life, I would say. But absolutely not from the same kind of tree. We follow this thing because it's very unusual. For some reason, I don't know why, absolutely not, but in Italy we have more kind of trees than in the rest of the old world. It's quite strange. And the trees look very different also. But the monocultivar for us is not the proper choice.

13:14Pepper Gross:So it's interesting that you're doing this blend. Because, I mean, like wine, olive oil every season has a different flavor because the terroir of it changes and the climate changes. and it could have been a drier summer, could have been, you never know where that frost is peppered to what you said too. I mean, this is kind of a weird question, but have you had one season that was like the best olive oil where you were like, that's it. We want every season to be like this one.

13:41Camillo Franchi Scarselli:Yeah, the best season is the next, always the next.

13:44Pepper Gross:The next one's always the best. Perfect.

13:46Camillo Franchi Scarselli:Now we, being seriously, we have sometimes season which are not good. For example, last year was not a good one because we had an amazing heating summer. It was very, very hot, very dry, not a single drop of water. And we used to water the trees a little bit, but this is not so good for the trees. So the season is the best help. The good quality of sun, of dryness, of create the start of the season in April. And then there's also a kind of luck, I would say. And you're right, absolutely. Every year the oil comes different. Comes different. But this is also something that we can work with during the blends.

14:40Camillo Franchi Scarselli:So we separate after the picking. The picking is obviously every day during the season. It starts at the beginning of October and ends by the end of November. And every day we go to the mill with the picking oil. And then we preserve each day olive oil, I'm sorry, oil. And then just after we start doing the mixes and trying to find out the best before to go to the bottle.

15:13Pepper Gross:I mean, it sounds like such a beautiful process and such high touch. And I think this is where when we talk about junkier olive oils, they're just throwing everything in and then they're processing it to get basically whatever their formula is consistently. But I mean, you are you are definitely, you know, boots in the field, so to speak, and picking each and really cultivating the best olive oil. Given that, I mean, what does growth look like for the company? Because that is a lot of work as you bring on more partner farms and helping them get, you know, biological farming going and keeping their trees healthy.

15:49Pepper Gross:And you've gone from one grove to 18 trees to 3000 trees. But what does the future look like as you think about growth and opportunity? I think for us, really, the like the growth and the opportunity is really looking at, you know, we have so many amazing B2B partners in the U.S. And that's been amazing for us. And then as we look kind of to the future, we'd love to like grow that and be with more, you know, being in Maine, we're at the farmer's market. We're very high touch with our community. And that's been amazing. And we've started to kind of grow out of the Northeast, which has been beautiful.

16:29Pepper Gross:beautiful. And that's kind of, I think, where we're growing in, obviously B2C as well, which has been beautiful seeing that grow. But yeah, I think Camillo has been able to partner with more and more farmers and slowly been able to partner with more and more people in the U.S. too. So it's kind of been a beautiful symbiotic growth. But that's, yeah, what we're looking to kind of as the year comes. Is there a maximum capacity presently for what you're producing? Because I would assume that there would be, because I mean, you can only produce so much and it's such a limited footprint for where the groves are.

17:06Camillo Franchi Scarselli:This is another question, if I can answer. I think that in a few years, definitely the oil should split in two different markets. The industrial oil and the artisanal, we definitely are in the second row, in the second field. Or doing a job which is all manual. We don't use chemicals, so we are not pushing the numbers. We want to grow little by little, step by step, knowing that we want to follow all the protocol that we use day by day. And probably we can triple the number of trees that we can work with. So I think the maximum number of trees that a company like ours could arrive at managing 10 ,000 trees, not missing anything in terms of quality.

18:05Camillo Franchi Scarselli:After this number could be something that necessarily could become industrialized. 10 ,000 also means the chance to be helped about another factor. I spoke about the climate change. Climate change is really here in Italy, like everywhere, really a disaster. A disaster because people are, as in the habit, to follow the procedures that were done by their ancestors. You never know. You cannot imagine how many times I heard people saying, we go picking by the end of November because my grandfather did it. And so it has to be good. Now it's absolutely difficult. This is a fact of culture. It obviously brings different quality, different things, and so the oil is changing like everything.

19:00Camillo Franchi Scarselli:And it's also quite difficult. And speaking about numbers, it also helps working in groves, which are not so close, but one to the other. because if we have icy rain in one valley, maybe we don't have it five miles away. The average would be the response. I'll give you just one other sentence. I'm sorry for the length. About the 25 % of the oil that we produce give free. We do not go to the bottle because maybe they were not good enough to be liberal oil, but it was costly to produce that. So we just leave it. It is extrovert, but it's not good enough. We need to develop, I think, three times as we are now.

19:51Pepper Gross:Do you just give it away? Because, I mean, what a wonderful gift to have if you live near the facility. To friends and neighbors. And I think Camila said several things there that I would love to expand on because they're so beautiful and so true. And one is, basically, if you look at an agricultural company, someone who works in the land with farms, you're always going to have like there's because you're working with earth there's going to be droughts there's going to be pests there's going to be unforeseen hurricanes and so what Camilla said in terms of spreading out our groves around different places that's in the past even though we're still you know very small um we'll have one valley the trees and the floods will be fine and then a different valley they won't be because they won't be hit by wind or they won't get quite as much rain.

20:38Pepper Gross:So that's something Camillo has been intentional about over the years. How do we have a level of biodiversity with our olives and where they're at that still keeps this very, very high quality olive oil? As Camillo mentioned, that's, you know, very top priority for us, but that diversifies our ability to kind of survive as these natural challenges happen season after season. So that's been really huge for us and helped us. And even in these bad seasons where we're all get less olive oil. It's still this, you know, incredible, excellent quality that is so delightful to see and experience. So that's also been a really cool thing to say.

21:19Pepper Gross:And I think one other thing was Camillo mentioned that people would in the old days say, oh, my grandmother or my grandfather always harvested in November. And that's been a really interesting thing where Camillo has really worked with these farmers to say, yes, you've done this for generations and it's good. But with our current climate, with our current system, do you maybe need to harvest in October instead? Will that give you a better olive, you know, olive oil and kind of gently bringing that to these communities of farmers who've done the same thing for so long? So I think as an Italian, as someone who's lived, you know, there for a while, he has that kind of standing in the community to say, you know, let's not use pesticides.

22:00Pepper Gross:Let's think about our harvesting. Let's try solar wells, you know. Let's think about these new ideas that maybe feel like a big change, but are actually really good for your land and for your olive oil. And that's where our two types of olive oil come down. So we have the Clasco and the Reserva. So they're made with the same olives, but one, the Reserva is harvested a month earlier. So there's a lot less of it. Kind of like grapes with a wine, the olives are smaller. So you get less oil, but it's much higher packed in antioxidants, polyphenols, It's spicier, it's bolder, more robust. And then we have the Classico, which we harvest later.

22:37Pepper Gross:We get a lot more olive oil from it, but it's a little more, a little less spicy. Still spicy, still delicious, but it has different flavor notes to it. I mean, I love that. There's so many things you're doing to help the struggles of generational olive farmers kind of think differently. And that's huge because, I mean, you can get stuck in your ways very easily. and I mean maybe that's sometimes why those groves were struggling so being able to come in with a fresh perspective and be like we can help we can do things differently we can show you a different way is incredibly impactful one thing I do want to ask about is the name which has the tie back to Dragonfly which I know is also on your website as well but it's it's got a wonderful symbiosis with the groves and what you're doing so maybe you can speak to the um the Dragonfly and the brand name?

23:26Camillo Franchi Scarselli:Yeah, the dragonfly is the English name for the bellula, or vice versa, which is the same. We name the bellula because a dragonfly could not survive in a grove if there are pesticides. You absolutely can't have anyone. So we are happy to say that we have a lot of butterflies in our growth. And for us, it seemed to be a nice name, a gentle name, at the beginning of our business because it was really born like just a nice purpose to do something that was just coming from the past. So we now finally touched the market and we are very happy to know that many people is happy for that. That's why we also started a couple of years ago to demand to anyone if you want to have an experience of peaking or pruning the trees with us.

24:25Camillo Franchi Scarselli:So we have a Casa Lacanze, a guest house, to host people coming for that. So this is so fun. It's very, very happy to join the work with people that is just interested to see how it works. You mentioned the grapes. The wine is fantastic, obviously. It's another thing. But a small difference, which is also quite impressive. If you go to a grove, picking the oil, the olive, the same day, less than 10 hours later, you can have your oil coming from the same. So you almost fail to name your oil with the name of the tree. It's quite easy.

25:11Pepper Gross:So I love that you're creating this beautiful product, but also for anyone who wants to go stay and work in the groves and stay at an Airbnb and be part of the process that you offer that as well. So anyone listening will have to put a link on there to the Airbnb in case in case you want to take, you know, a casual trip to Italy and stay in a beautiful old medieval town and pick all its and make olive oil. Yes, absolutely. We've had someone, this whole Horace from the U.S. has come and helped. He's been amazing, Chris. He's been wonderful. But we've had multiple other people who, customers in the U.S.

25:51Pepper Gross:who we met in the U.S. who have come for a weekend, for a day. And it's been lovely. And one thing I also meant to add, Camilla was speaking that our capacity for our trees would be around 10 ,000. I think something that's interesting to note is when you get to this industrial level, what does that look like? And for a lot of these very big olive oil companies, they'll use trucks to shake trees to make the olives fall down, to make the harvesting much easier than doing it with hand tools. and that's part of our regenerative agriculture that we really don't want to do that because it does hurt the trees long-term and it's not being what we feel respectful of the land and the long-term longevity of the trees and so that's where we get this line of how do you be as regenerative as possible?