How Citizens of Soil Is Reinventing Olive Oil

19:11Sarah Vachon:Yeah, all of our groves are at least 50 % female-led and female-owned. So we have a couple incredible, just dynamic women who do everything and very small artisan producers who literally farm, mill, do it all. And then the rest of them are kind of a makeup of, yeah, owning the land. They're the miller. But that's part of the criteria, the benchmark when we start working with farmers. It's incredible. Okay, so give us the overview then of the business today. The business has had a pretty phenomenal couple of years.

19:35Michael Vachon:So we kind of grew from 250K in 2023 to a little over a million in 2024 to almost 3 million in 2025. It's incredible. This year we could do, I mean, we're aiming for over 5 million this year. It's definitely going to be a, you know, last year, 142 % year-on-year growth. About 70 % of that is still DTC, despite the fact that end of December, we were the fastest growing branded olive oil in all of grocery. The slight caveat being brands over 100K in sales. We didn't get expanded distribution. We just worked hard working the distribution we had. The distribution actually only increased at the end of November in 2025.

20:15Michael Vachon:So we're really talking about 11 months of strong growth in the stores that we were in, coupled with a big increase in our olive oil club, which is now over 15 ,000 people who are getting olive oil delivered every month. That's incredible. And so what's the subscription for that then monthly? What does it cost? Yeah, so£15 a month and you're getting a refill pouch delivered through your letterbox. We're the only letterbox subscription for olive oil in the UK. So I can easily say we're also the largest, but I would say we're probably, I feel pretty confident saying we're the largest of any olive oil subscription in the UK.

20:54Michael Vachon:And is it a different oil every month?

20:55Sarah Vachon:Yeah, that's part of the club. It's like 500 ml, so it's the size of our bottle. We just launched these ceramics as well last year so people can actually refill into this vessel that's made near one of our producers.

21:08Michael Vachon:It's amazing how far we got without actually giving people something to put it in. We just kept sending them pouches every month without telling them what to do with it. But the ceramics have been absolutely transformative. More than half of people who subscribe to the Olive Oil Club and become members are also adding a ceramic bottle at the time purchase. That's incredible. So talk to us then about who this person is. so your largest part of your business is DTC right what part of that is the subscription or

21:33Sarah Vachon:is that a new and growing part the subscription was actually there from the very beginning because I was coming out of the sustainability world and I used to work with a pretty luxury gin business and I remember every time you take these bottles that were just so beautiful with their gold you know and the cork and all that and you just like throw them away and we'd be at these events and just throwing out like hundreds of bottles and I was like this is wild so I always knew and from some of the projects we were doing in the beauty space at my business in sustainability as I was leaving, I was like, we just need to make a beautiful vessel that we can refill with as light a weight of possible carbon option.

22:07Sarah Vachon:So the pouches that we did are these multi-layers. So it's not a monoplastic, it's a multi-layer that was 15 times less carbon than our glass. Just that, not even the tertiary, like the extra packaging you have to do, which you have to do for glass. These things, like they rarely, you know, they never bust. They're so reliable. And it gave us this opportunity yeah to also be letterbox which was to help cut down on like the shipping in general and those are pouches that we from the very beginning have also taken back so you can send them back to us for free we have a free post we take them back so we can completely break down that packaging and close the loop that has been like a whole part of the process that i actually wanted from the very beginning so our first product was our greek bottle and the refill pouch to go with it and then we wanted people to be able to keep subscribing however that first year or two was actually just the same oil.

22:56Sarah Vachon:You just got the same oil every month or every two months sent to you. And we slowly got it letterboxable. It was a really hard thing to do at the beginning. I think we thought our first pouches would be letterboxable and it took us probably a year or more to get there.

23:08Michael Vachon:So was it a number of things that all came together at once between 2024 and 2025 to make that jump to from the one and a half to three million? Or was it one thing in particular? Like what were the big levers? I mean, there are a couple of things from the club side that really drastically changed our subscription. So we started calling it a club for starters. It used to be called subscribed refills. Subscribed refills is not very exciting, but joining an olive oil club is much more exciting. And almost overnight, we saw 10x increase in new members joining the club. Huge, huge change. That, and coupled with what Sarah said about we were previously just sending the same oil every month, now you're getting a different oil every month.

23:55Michael Vachon:Pricing didn't change. In fact, if anything, we actually raised the price by£1.50. Website didn't change? Nope. Just the positioning of it as a club. Nope, didn't spend any more. So you're spending the same amount, you're just calling it a club instead of a subscription refill. Isn't it incredible? And we're talking about people in the context of them being members of a community rather than them being subscribers. We have drilled it into our team as well. If we see the word subscription or subscriber, we're like, they're members, not subscribers. And everybody in the team now knows it's like a dirty word.

24:27Michael Vachon:Put a pound in the swear jar if you say subscriber instead of member. It has genuinely changed how we treat the community, how we try and bring them closer to the producers as well so that it lives to our mission, which is to turn a commodity into a community. And I think membership of that club is a really big part of that. What a great question. And it has fundamentally changed the commercials of our subscription business. That's wonderful. So which retailers are you in as well as the DTC? Just Ocado, Waitrose? Waitrose, Ocado, Booths, Fortnum, Selfridges, and tons of independents. I'm imagining that per 100 mils, the premium that the consumer is paying is significant, is it?

25:09Michael Vachon:So in a retail setting, our pouches start at 16 and our bottles start at 19. I would say even at 19, we're probably in the 80th percentile. There's probably still 20 % of brands that are more expensive than us. Most of those brands don't have anywhere near the transparency or trust that we've been really imbuing into the brand. No, the reason I ask this, I mean, just to point out for anyone listening, is more to show the value that you can add to a category by rather than competing on price, competing on uniqueness, sustainability, something different and assuming the best that there will be shoppers who will pay for that, who will pay extra rather than, you know, oh, well, it's way too much more than the average olive oil.

25:53Michael Vachon:No one will buy it. You guys have come out with something that your value proposition holds up. There are enough people that are willing to pay for it. So talk to us about those people, the people who are your members but also the people in store you know what is different about them why are they choosing citizens of soil rather than say you know a another premium olive oil in

26:13Sarah Vachon:store yeah i mean i think we have a lot of clarity on the d2c side which is why it's such a beautiful channel because we can do annual surveys we call them up we have them come out to events we do as many opportunities you can just talk and engage with that audience so in there we have a few profiles. And actually one of the insights that came out of it last year was this massive increase in people using it from a nutrition perspective, people really into it for the antioxidants, people kind of health hacking their way through life. And that insight of talking to these people and even like, you know, going out to coffee, going out for coffee with them, having them at events, having specific events and hearing their questions, what they wanted, asking them, how are you using this?

26:51Like, are you using it on, you know, across your cooking or, okay, you're just

26:55Sarah Vachon:taking a shot in a spoonful in the morning okay we need to kind of assess what we should give you and so we just launched off the back of that our olive oil the health club which is really these high polyphenol extra virgin olive oils which is really this next level in nutrition so from the very beginning every oil that we source which is actually how we still have a lot of customers engaged on our regular olive oils is because all of our extra virgin olive oils are what are considered high polyphenol by the eu health standard this is over 250 milligrams per kilogram of total polyphenols. And in those polyphenols, there are some really powerful ones that are known for anti-inflammatory that a lot of people, even if they have everything from autoimmune to actually just wanting longevity and wanting to work on their joints or, you know, just wanting a better overall health.

27:42Sarah Vachon:These people are getting into high polyphenol extra virgin alveol. So that's one thing that we delivered is one this year for our health club. That is three times, Basically, you can become a member to get every month or every other month an oil that is more than three times what is classified as a high polyphenol extra virgin olive oil and specifically sourced with a nutritional breakdown. So you can look at some of those specific antioxidants if you are the sort of person that is using olive oil for that. And that was an insight that came directly from this nutrition crew. And we do still have people that maybe haven't upgraded to the health club or moved into the health club space.

28:17Sarah Vachon:I wouldn't say it's an upgrade because the reality is it's a different sort of oil. It's a more intense, way more peppery, way more bitter, maybe not something you want to cook everything with. A lot of producers actually don't like to make those oils because they find them too intense in flavor.

28:29Michael Vachon:Can you switch between the two? Because I can imagine if I set up a subscription, which I'm going to do after this, I would like one month to have the beautiful drizzly cooking or cooking oil. Well, there's probably three different types because we always have at home, we will always have a crappy olive oil for cooking. And by crappy, I mean, you know, and then we will have a salad olive oil that we'll spend a bit more on or drizzle olive oil. But now I would like to have every, say, every third month to have my health oil because I probably won't go through the whole bottle in a month. Is that possible or is that just too complex?

29:00Sarah Vachon:Yeah, it's quite flexible. We have a great background account for our members that they can change, you know, pause, skip, change their frequency. So we do have people that do every other month.

29:12Michael Vachon:If this episode is inspiring you to think about new ways that you can drive growth for your business, don't forget to click follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast app and even leave a review your small gesture has a big impact on me and my business and will be truly appreciated this is so exciting so what is the vision what is the plan you know so far everything has been do the things we do and continue to do them as well as we can yeah so launching the health club this year is really the first innovation if you will in four years we haven't really done anything truly new, maybe a few new releases, but they're still in the same brand world, right?

29:51Michael Vachon:This is the first kind of, we've moved into a health product as opposed to a food product, even though health and food, it's all nutritious, right? The need state is kind of different though. I mean, it's a very different need state. Exactly. The use is different, the occasion is different, and we really debated whether to do it at all because we're not trying to be a health brand. We are a food brand first. This is what people are asking for, right?

30:13Sarah Vachon:But it came about because we have these customers that are, because we were so transparent from the very beginning, we already had our lab analysis. We were the first brand on Ocado, which has, you know, insane amount of olive oils. We were the first brand on Ocado to put the polyphenols. We were the first one to have it on pack. We didn't do that intentionally to attract this crew.

30:34Michael Vachon:It was more from a transparency perspective. And they went and they found you because that's what they were looking for. They're called your lead users.

30:41Sarah Vachon:Yes. And we would find them and hear about them talking about us in things like Zoe's community and other health communities were telling us that, oh, people are tagging you in Reddit forums or different channels around health and nutrition. And we're like, huh. So they have found the information we've just given them. We haven't pushed this. If you look at our beautiful wine bottles, they certainly don't scream health. So they have found us. And instead of going to some people that do sell medicinal olive oils, they've come to us because we were showing that transparency and the lab analysis and the certifications to back it up.

31:13Sarah Vachon:And so that just meant, OK, they want it. Let's give them what they've asked for.

31:17Michael Vachon:See, this is where, you know, people talk about social listening being important. And I think a lot of people are thinking social listening is just, oh, has our brand been mentioned and has an influencer mentioned it? But what everyone should be doing is listening to how people are using the product instead of what? What are they doing it instead of? What job are they renting your product to do. Now you guys are innovating.

31:37Sarah Vachon:Totally. I remember getting a voice note and we've had this, a lot of customers, they ask us very detailed health questions to the point that we have to outsource it to nutritionists and, you know, actual professionals because they'll leave us a voice note like, so I'm trying to compare, you know, with my omegas and is this, or should I take a vitamin E supplement? So they're really comparing us, this segment, not all of our customers, but this segment are really comparing us in that supplement space. So that made it really apparent for us that we should release something because they're already doing it on their behalf.

32:05Sarah Vachon:So let's just make sure that's more obvious for them. It's amazing.

32:08Michael Vachon:And when I think about the future of kind of the pipeline of things we want to do, it's going to be a really boring answer, but there's not a lot in it. We're not trying to expand that to all different types of oils, avocado, coconut, rapeseed. We're not trying to do balsamic vinegar. We do what we do and we do it as best as anyone has ever done in the UK. And so we're going to continue to try and be the best tasting, the most nutritious, the most sustainable brand. If we keep drilling those things and keep doing those things, well, those things are working and the club is working. We're growing last year.

32:48Michael Vachon:We more than doubled the size of the club. And this year, we hope we can double it again. And that is because the reviews are fantastic. The community is loyal. They are engaged and we represent good value at 15 pounds a month delivered to what they would buy or what they're used to buying in the supermarket. It kind of reminds me almost like the Ancient and Brave business, you know, the supplements business and the whole community they've curated around that or that has come naturally, but then they have kind of gathered up and held and nurtured. Or I spoke to a fabulous brand in Ireland called Sisterly.

33:22Michael Vachon:They've built a fabulous community-based business as well. It's a nutritional supplement, but it's very much around lifestyle. One of the things that comes to mind when you guys are talking is, first of all, it's wonderful to hear such focus, such single-minded focus. The thing that comes to mind is something that Seth Godin, that wonderful marketeer, taught me through doing his courses and getting his emails every day is people like us do things like this. You look at who are the people like us or people like them. So your people like them are the people who really care about sustainability and transparency and maybe health and having really good quality nutrition or food or moments in certain parts of their day or how their pantry looks.

34:00Michael Vachon:What else do they do? And where do we find them? People like those do things like that. They are often, those people who do things like that are often the best salespeople because they're surrounded by other people like those who do things like that. And I think that's wonderful. See, like, how do we harness, how do we find more people like those who do things like that? I'm always banging on to Mighty Slice, Better Nature, all the brands that I work with on the mini MBA saying, where are your people like those who do things like that? Go find more of them, because if you find one, there's going to be more.

34:29Michael Vachon:And the other thing, actually, and I'm more saying this, not for you guys, obviously, but for the listeners linking up, making a red thread between all the things I bang on about on all the other podcasts and in any of my programs. The red thread to that is Category Pirates. A super of one is a super of nine. So I had Eddie Yoon of Category Pirates on and Category Pirates have done econometric research to show that if you are a super consumer of one category, you're a super consumer of nine other categories. So I imagine you guys would be able to identify what are the nine other categories that your consumers are super consumers.

35:04Michael Vachon:I bet you dark chocolate, Kraft, dark chocolate is up there. Yeah.

35:08Sarah Vachon:We spend a lot of time, even when we're looking at product collabs, actually, we just did a product collab test with Land Chocolate on just that. And it's been something that sold really well on our basket as like an add to cart feature. So we certainly, I sit in our weekly marketing meeting addressing just this. Like, who are these other communities? What are they? We know wine is actually, if you're really into the terroir of wine and exploring these different regions, those people that want to go to a vineyard, actually, they also want to go to an olive harvest. And so we've started to extend that to members of our community.

35:37Sarah Vachon:And we've actually had some of our members now go out and visit our producers. So, yeah, like tapping into this travel lifestyle, the person that likes this like eco, local kind of travel, but on a still quite affluent like experience. People who like to dine at these sort of restaurants, people who are going to this sort of retreat. Exactly to your point.

35:55Michael Vachon:They've probably bought Isle of Man sea salt because that's a UNESCO sea salt that we have here on the Isle of Man that also sells in the South for just giving it a big plug. Like you can buy me a coffee, Helen. Identifying those nine other categories. And they can be not food and bev, right, categories. I mean, maybe they've got a particular type of vegan leather bag. Or what would be weird and wonderful non-food categories? I mean, maybe they practice yoga or pilates. What else? Tell us what else they are. Because I'm trying to use this as a case study for those people listening so they can think about their own brands.

36:25Sarah Vachon:Yeah, we've looked a lot at, so like eco-cleaning, but like something like a Purdy and Fig. If you're a Purdy and Fig customer, you know you're already looking at um beautification healthy cleaning beautification of a of another staple at home amazing um we see it with things like trap you know suitcase brands like this kind of crossover of like you're an affluent traveler and you're taking like care and like the craftsmanship of how something like that is made um yeah trying to think of some of our other partnerships or you know kind of conversation even something like um patch plants we've done a lovely clap where they did an olive tree in the bottle people that want you know nature in their homes and and are into gardening.

37:02Sarah Vachon:Like this is a really lovely crossover for us as well.

37:05Michael Vachon:And I think we also found that our demographic is a lot different than we thought it was going to be. Okay. You know, we didn't expect that a third of our customers would be probably 60 or 65 plus, which that was only out of the born out of surveys and research that we did speaking to customers. Why didn't you expect that? Because we're not 65 plus, right? That's the answer I wanted. Yeah, we ended up marketing to people who are like us, right? I think of one example, we did a, there was one kind of natural wine shop that we really, we loved. We had friends who own it. We really tried to market hard to their customer base.

37:41Michael Vachon:We did competitions, we did samples, we did all kinds of marketing in-source. It didn't move the dial at all. I mean, it just was not selling even in cases, let alone bottles. And actually, when we have done all these surveys, the 65 plus are extremely loyal. They find something that they like, they will not change. They are not price sensitive. They will pay for the things that they think are really worth paying for in quality. They've time to cook. Time to cook, of course. And they're very generous with their time and excited to get on the phone with us and talk to us for a half hour about what they're doing, how they use it.

38:24Michael Vachon:who they're telling you about it, what other things they do. Have you heard this from any of them, which is something that I hear, have heard a lot in focus groups over the years, but also just by talking to consumers, shoppers at till, because my kids hate it, but I talk to shoppers who are in front of me at the till and they look at me. I was having this conversation actually with someone on a podcast recently, or no, it was at the Cross de Malika dinner or do last week. They look at me when they see me look at someone at the till in front of me and they go, no, don't do it. They often say, women who might be over 65 will say to me, I'll say, well, do you mind me asking why you've bought that?

39:03Michael Vachon:And they say, my husband doesn't know, but I'm trying to reduce the amount of meat he gets. My husband doesn't know, but I'm trying to give him better fats because he's got high cholesterol or he's borderline diabetes or whatever, or, you know. And so they're kind of managing somebody else's diet on the sly, which I think is an interesting one as well. for that particular group.

39:24Sarah Vachon:That is an interesting one. We haven't heard that as much as I often talk about this, like whenever women enter menopause, about that same time as when men's heart starts to have a lot of issues. And so they're both going through quite significant changes in their health. And that audience is really interesting because they are actively searching for things and they are making, to your point, adjustments based on that as like a unit, as a couple. And so they're even the ones that sometimes come to these events. But what I really like is we have these two generations of people who are, and they sometimes come to our events and they're certainly members, they gift each other.

39:58Sarah Vachon:It's either their kids in their, you know, around 30 have gifted their parents or the parents have gifted their kids. And now we have these doubles. So we even had, I remember at our early harvest tasting, this mother had come with her two adult children. She lives just outside of London. She's just retired outside of London. Her two adult children who live in London. And this is like a shared experience that they're all kind of interested in. And so that's been like a really lovely delight because it does speak to, and I think we do get some younger customers because people want to gift their kids, you know, something nice for their first home or they just got married or they just started to couple off.

40:32Sarah Vachon:Then people also think, oh, this is a great gift for my parents because they're not drinking as much anymore and they're concerned about their health and they're staying and eating at home more. So we get both of those audiences, which is, yeah, a lovely, those turning points in people's lives.

40:45Michael Vachon:So no conversation about scaling is a proper conversation if we don't talk about people and team because you know they do so much work so much passion so much heavy lifting so who have you got in which roles and I imagine you've been doing a lot of recruitment in the last year to keep up with growth how are you managing that?

41:02Sarah Vachon:The bulk of it has happened this past year so we kind of market by harvest years we really run the business as with as along with our farmers to the harvest cycle. And this past harvest, we took 12 people on our harvest trip. And the year before, there was like four. We do an annual harvest trip with our whole team.

41:20Michael Vachon:Yeah, an annual harvest trip.

41:21Sarah Vachon:That is lovely. Yeah, to a different grove. Obviously, Michael and I are out with our producers all the time, but it's a nice point to bring the team out to really see, one, meet the people, see. So everyone is very comfortable in how an artisan oil is made versus the bulk of the commodity oils, really understanding that differentiation. this year was substantial because it was such a big group and they were all new, which is a really interesting thing to have built this team and take them all out and be like, you don't know anything about all of all yet and you're going to learn it like today on the Groves.

41:49Michael Vachon:That's great. Where is the heavy lifting? Is it supply chain or marketing or DTC growth? It's mostly marketing. We've really hired ahead of the curve on marketing. we're between content brand and just really making sure that we have a full funnel engine there when it comes to the marketing team because that really does drive a lot of the d2c side of the business as well yeah if we weren't a d2c business we could get by with probably just

42:16Sarah Vachon:like a marketing manager you know a kind of a catch-all which is how we started it and then we realized oh my gosh okay if you're going to be d2c and then once you start doing advertising You really need someone that's like just doing that and who's designing that and who's making that content and who's shooting that. So that as we've grown and scaled on the advertising side, it's meant building a brand team that's quite strong and agile. It can crank out the content necessary.

42:40Michael Vachon:In-house designer, in-house content creator, in-house brand manager. Yeah, all of these. Yeah, that's the in-house CRM.

42:48Sarah Vachon:We also have a customer service person because of how big our membership pool has grown. So we have someone who just really does customer service and sometimes like member events. So we do like, you know, monthly tastings with our members. So that person is there. And then I would say because of the way we source, which is what sets us apart from probably, I would love to meet another food business in your network that operates the same way that we do because, you know, we are fortunate to be in a lovely co-working space with the Bold Bean crew and Sunny and Luna and all these wonderful businesses that we really love.

43:17Sarah Vachon:But because we source directly from small producers, it is a lot of management. a lot of paperwork and admin. We're not going to just a middle supplier or a manufacturer that can kind of handle all that for us. We are having to get small scale producers up to scratch to even pass audits. And so as a result, we've just brought on a supply chain manager and a lot. Yeah, there's been a lot on the operation side that I don't think we were expecting how difficult it would be. Are you able to automate any part of it at all with AI?

43:47Michael Vachon:We're looking at it. We're just starting then. How are you going about looking at it out of interest? Well, there's certain things like document repositories and stage gates that need to happen. We can certainly automate some of that. Sorry, I have to give a plug here. There's a business called Food Flu, F-O-O-D-F-L-O-U. And they've just launched and they do all of that for quality assurance and all the stage gating and everything. And it's like really reasonable per month. Anyway, just thought I'd say that. No, no, great. I mean, we're just the very beginning stage of that. We've started to build a couple of things in-house.

44:20Michael Vachon:We've got a sales dashboard, a cashflow forecast, and a thing to measure the performance of our fulfillment. We built those apps in-house. Are you guys on our AI group on the NextGen? I'm on the AI group, yes. I'm there. In fact, we're just starting to automate some of these things. Where we're in lightest is actually sales. We've got one salesperson and one fractional person supporting a grocery for two days a week. That's the sales team for B2B.

44:48Sarah Vachon:brand does a lot of heavy lifting so that's something yeah we're gonna have to shift yeah

44:53Michael Vachon:i mean i'm pretty sure you put in another senior salesperson you'd make their salary back five to ten times very quickly if they were choosing the right bets and placing placing the chips on the right bets between sarah and i i'd say our our roles and responsibilities are largest but between sarah's very front of house managing all the farmers managing all the marketing and certainly sustainability. That is a lot. And I can run back of house, commercial, finance, legal, etc. So we kind of largely divide between those two. And are you guys a husband and wife team? We are very much husband and wife and have been for the entire time we've run the business.

45:33Michael Vachon:I would say that it is maybe not as hard as I thought it would be. And I think that's because we really do trust each other to stay in each other's lanes. If it comes to marketing, I trust Sarah's going to do a much better job than I ever would. And if it comes to operations, she knows it's under control. I'd say there are a couple of things we've said as kind of ground rules that have made it really helpful between the two of us. And the kind of golden rule is if one of us feels strongly about something and the other just has an opinion, feels strongly wins. Okay. We can both veto the other person.

46:11Michael Vachon:There have been so many times we're up and on the fence of something and Sarah goes, well, actually, I've got conviction about this. I will always defer to her conviction and likewise, she'll do it for me. I think that has probably avoided 98 % of potential arguments because it's where we both feel very strongly in complete opposite directions. Okay, nice. Nice. That's a great tip. Sarah, what's it like working with your husband?

46:35Sarah Vachon:When I met Michael, he met me and started his first business at the same time. Like he met us actually both at the same conference. He started his new, when he went into the drinks world. So I've only ever known him as an entrepreneur. You know, I met him and he was doing his MBA and I knew there were no weekends, free weekends. There are no holidays that you don't take a laptop. Like this is just the world of an entrepreneur. So I think that expectation was already, like it was a part of our life. So me, suddenly me stepping into this world didn't really change that. I'd also say we really early on, we hired our head of ops, who's still with us, Natalie Williams, and she is amazing.

47:11Sarah Vachon:And we really do see her kind of as like a third, like the third leg of our stool. So she, and she thinks completely differently than us. She's very operational, very finance, very like analytical focused. And so we're able to bring her into a lot of the decision-making and she's someone that we both immensely trust. And so we can always use her as like a kind of almost like a third founder.

47:31Michael Vachon:Okay that's amazing well look I am absolutely delighted to know more about Citizens of Soil and to have tasted your high polyphenol oil. It's changed my life. Oh just one question actually I haven't really ever dove into is that even a word into olive oil and health other than to know it's supposed to be really good for heart and joints but is it really like so if I'm someone I'm not able to take HRT because of my breast cancer history. It's really horrible waking up in the morning and you're creaky bones. The difference between being 47 and 50 is mental in terms of creakiness and cracking. Does olive oil actually help?

48:07Michael Vachon:Does high polyphenol olive oil actually help? And should I be taking it?

48:11Sarah Vachon:Any extra virgin olive oil is going to have any decent extra virgin olive oil that's fresh again, know that when it was harvested, is going to have these anti-inflammatory effects. But certain ones have higher levels because of specific polyphenols. For example, the one you'd want to look out for is oleocanthal. And so the oils that we've harvested for the health club have really high levels of oleocanthal. And oleocanthal, if you look into it, is a fascinating story about a doctor from the US who was in a conference in Italy and he tried an olive oil on its own. It had a really peppery, bitter punch on the back of his throat.

48:42Sarah Vachon:And it reminded him of these clinical trials he was doing around liquid ibuprofen. He took the olive oil back to the lab and started researching and realized that this had the same components. as ibuprofen. So oleocanthal is like this natural, you know, I tell people, if you have a headache, you can't take a shot of olive oil and have it go away. But it's a low dose natural anti-inflammatory without the other side effects that's going throughout your day. So if you're having this throughout your mealtimes, it is something that's giving you really breaking down. I mean, you can kind of look into the science behind how it specifically works from an anti-inflammatory perspective.

49:15Sarah Vachon:But we have a lot of customers actually who do talk about joint pain in their reviews. If you look at our customer reviews on the site, you can actually just do a search for people talking about joints and inflammation and see some of the people's responses to using just, you know, again, any of our extroversion olive oils. But if you're targeting certain things, oleocanthal is quite magical, as is hydroxeterosal, which is another incredibly well-researched, I mean, we're talking about like two or three decades worth of research around these and multiple clinical trials.

49:41Michael Vachon:This is great. Okay, I'm signing myself up. Thank you so much for coming on the show and well done for everything you've achieved. I mean, this is going to go astronomically stratospheric. I hope it does. I hope you've got enough olive groves. Thank you so much. And I'm looking forward to sharing this with all of our listeners. Thank you so much for coming on today. Thank you, Fiona. Appreciate it.

50:05Michael Vachon:Someone said to me recently that Citizens of Soil was one of the most exciting brands out there at the moment. And I have to say, understanding what Sarah and Michael have created, especially around this olive oil club and how the difference between just calling something a subscription and inviting people to be part of a club makes such a difference has just opened my mind up to how big global this brand this company could be and that's really exciting so one to watch one to follow if you want to link up with the brand follow them on instagram follow their stories all of the links will be in the show notes below.

50:39Michael Vachon:And as always, if you got anything out of this episode, if it's taught you anything, if it's made you think about your business differently, then please do like and follow the show. Click subscribe on your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a fellow founder or a colleague and even leave us a review. It really does make a huge difference to our ratings, our rankings, our sponsorship and our ability to bring you even bigger and better guests. Thank you so much.

51:14Michael Vachon:As always, thanks again to my tech guru and sound engineer, Jip Bagan of Ballagroove, and my podcast producer, Catherine of Social Cues.