Building an Olive Oil Brand That Farmers Trust and Shoppers Love

0:00Just switching from subscribe for refills to join the club really transformed not only our sales but how we thought about our whole business. Hey, everyone. Thanks for tuning in to Shopify Masters. I'm your host, Shuang Esther Shan, and this is your companion for starting and scaling a business. After building a career in marketing and tech, our guest today decided to get her hands dirty, this time in olive oil. As she dug deeper into the industry, Sarah Vashon quickly discovered that this everyday kitchen staple was long overdue for refresh, especially when it comes to transparency, sustainability, and how farmers are supported?

0:42The answer, co-founding Citizens of Soil, a modern olive oil brand rooted in soil health, ethical sourcing, and beautifully designed refillable packaging. Sarah is in studio with me to chat all about sourcing, building a robust subscription model, and developing key partnerships with the likes of Waitrose and Selfridges. Welcome to the show, Sarah. Oh, thank you for having me. What a great intro. Thank you. Well, I'm so happy you're here. It's such a special moment for me because my friend, who coincidentally is also named Sarah, introduced me to Citizens of Soil. She had it on her counter, and I think it's such a great representation of the brand because she was so excited to talk about it, and she was such a big advocate for the brand as well.

1:29Take us back to the moment where you actually decided that you wanted to dedicate yourself to olive oil. it's an interesting journey because like you said I have I'm a career marketer but I'd always worked kind of in food and drink and hospitality so I've been around that but actually when I started the business as a side hustle I was working in sustainability for a company called provenance and we were doing these deep dives into supply chains it was all about supply chain transparency traceability provenance like in the name and I was getting kind of aware of what was happening in commodity supply chains like coffee and tea and chocolate and kind of the artisan movements that had happened around those to bring awareness to the fact that there's like not ethical practices, you know, not all qualities the same.

2:15And yet at the same time, we had these really close family friends in Greece who were small scale olive oil producers, just like a lot of small batch farmers across the Mediterranean. They were making things like wine and honey and cheese and also olive oil. And so I was bringing this back to a network of really quite foodie friends, chefs, bartenders, and everyone was saying, oh, my gosh, this is amazing. I'm like, yeah, why is it so good? Why does it taste better than all the olive oils I can find here? And this is running alongside these projects. I'm doing commodities, and I'm starting to talk to our friends, like, how are you farming?

2:48How do you sell this? And getting a grip with this system that very soon became apparent that it was a broken system. Olive oil is a commodity. It's traded as a commodity, and it's treated as a commodity, which means that there are set market prices that really squeeze farmers. And when farmers are squeezed, they cut quality, they degrade the land, they do everything in order to actually make any sort of livelihood from it. And here were our friends making something in a very wholesome quality way. They were kind of increasing biodiversity. They had stopped tilling the land. They were harvesting early in the season, which gives you less oil but a better quality.

3:22So they were doing all these factors that made a really nice quality oil, But the price wasn't represented because they were just selling into this, you know, cooperative mill into the market. So I decided, you know what, as a marketer, I can market your oil. Let me buy it for, you know, I think that year it was like triple or quadruple the commodity price. Let me pay you more than you'd make and we can sell it. And with some of the extra investment, we can put back into regenerating your land. Because this was something I had become really switched on to working in sustainability and with Providence.

3:52Like seeing things like soil regeneration and soil health seem to solve so many of the issues that we were seeing, particularly in the Mediterranean when we're dealing with a climate that is heating at a higher rate than the rest of the global average, where there's always been this industrial agriculture that's just like ripped apart the landscape. So that really, the purpose side of the business paired with the fact that it was a fantastic oil and a lot of people were trying it in food and drink and thinking, you know, bartenders are putting in some cocktails and having to play with it. And we thought this is something really special to launch.

4:24Yeah, amazing. I mean, there's so much to unpack. And I like the part where you said, you know, you're taking a risk. You're buying oil from these farms that you admired and you will help them market and reach a better set of customers. So how did you kind of make that risk feel less risky for yourself and also connect the farmers to the consumers? Yeah, so it started with one family farm and we knew really early on it was going to be D2C. I was really kind of admiring just as a consumer a lot of beauty brands and refill brands and D2C subscription coffee companies. And so I thought, well, this is olive oil.

5:03This is something that has like more than a 50 percent penetration, household penetration in the UK. It's even more so in the US. This is something everyone is using in their kitchens. So it feels like it could be on subscription. It feels like that same sort of product that needs a restock because people are using it every day as they cook. So I knew I wanted that model. D2C also gives you the opportunity to like connect the farmers to the table and to like, not only were we putting their name on the packaging, but we could really bring alive their stories on the website. You know, give like sneak peeks, do virtual tastings, give as much information about the farmers as possible.

5:36And so that connection back to the source was always important. And also like, I think we're in an era where people are unsubscribing, but you have worked on the wording where it's joining the club. Talk to us about that process of honing in on the wording and building out this model where people are excited and wanting to stay subscribed. Yeah. So it actually started with subscribe for refills because we were this refill brand. You know, the bottle, the pouch you get to refill. That's what we offered in retail. And that's what the subscription was. It was every month you get a pouch through your letterbox, which is quite unique to the UK.

6:11Very special that we can do that in this country. So it was going through everyone's letterbox. and it was more or less the same oil, but because we kept running out, so then maybe four months and I'd change it to another batch of oil and then I'd switch another. It wasn't very consistent. It was like, okay, four months of this and then maybe six months of this and the last two months I had another oil. So that was just like teething pains of growing and not having enough oil and not estimating the growth we would have for our subscribers. So at the start of last year, we made this decision, which was join the Olive Oil Club.

6:41So we changed the wording, the CTA on the site from this subscribe for refills to join the club. And encompassing what we were offering into the Olive Oil Club, from there we just saw the numbers go up. And it also meant that what I had wanted to do, which is give a new oil every month, was something that we could do. And that meant more of this discovery process, this whole membership, you know, how do you learn about different oils, different cultivars, different varieties and regions, and every month get a new oil that comes, again, through your letterbox, but every month the card is different about the producer, recipes to pair with that oil, a little bit about them, what's in season, and it feels like more of an experience.

7:19And that small step, even though it was like kind of the same thing, like it was the same sort of product format that was going through, you know, the same fulfillment style happening, just switching from subscribe for refills to join the club really transformed not only our sales, but how we thought about our whole business. Yeah, it's also something fun, right? It's finding a little bit of magic in the mundane. Like you use olive oil every day, but now you're discovering something new every month if you choose to. So I think that's really special. The fact that you moved out of Greece and you have to source from so many different places, what were you looking for when you're looking for new suppliers because you have this focus on family and female run farms?

8:08So yeah, talk to us about finding new partners. So the first thing is looking for small-scale producers. I think they are absolutely vital to the future of our landscape from loads of different touch points. Then we are always looking for groves that are at least 50 % female-led. So we look for women across the agricultural supply chain, be it a miller. Maybe they are actually doing the farming. Maybe they're doing more of the blending and production side. But we are always looking for women in agriculture to champion them in this. So as a result, a lot of the groves that we work with, actually all of them are at least 50 % female owned, but also like lead, someone making business decisions, not just like a token name on the estate.

8:47Then it's about regenerative agricultural practices. So this is soil health where it becomes really important. So within that, there is a checklist of things, starting with organically farmed. It doesn't have to be certified at the beginning. We can help them on that, but it needs to be organically farmed to an EU standard. Then we're looking for things that lower no tilling. So this is like tearing up the land between the trees that just really wreaks havoc on the soil and really wrecks the landscape. And then increasing biodiversity. So this is something that's really important as well because a lot of olive oil production, a lot of our food production is monocrop.

9:22So we're trying to maintain habitats for wild animals, trying to maintain, you know, healthy soil bacteria, which is fueled by the whole biodiversity at play. And then finally, often it's like incorporating grazing animals, which is just a principle of regenerative agriculture, although sometimes depending on the growth of that one, we can be more flexible on. So whenever I go out there to farm, it's like, is this a small-scale farm? What's the leadership look like? What's the split? And are they farming regeneratively? And then we can kind of start to have a conversation. After that, only once I see that checklist is complete will I ask for their labs.

9:58And this is really important from a quality perspective. So we do third-party lab reports on all of the oils that we bring over. And there's very specific things that I'm looking for because extra virgin olive oil is, I think, one of the only foods that I know about that has to legally in the EU, it has to undergo both a sensory and a lab analysis for quality. And so I really use those lab reports to dig in to make sure how long is this going to last. And it's hard. Sometimes I find incredible farmers that fit that whole checklist. They're doing things sustainably. It's this beautiful, ethical, equal, you know, regenerative process.

10:29But at the end of the day, the oil doesn't make the cut. And that's something we can work with them on the future. We can give them advice, connect them with experts that can actually help them improve the quality. But we never sacrifice, of course, flavor and nutrition as a part of that. It's such a thoughtful process. I also, because there's so many great retailer relationships with Waitrose and Fortnum's and Selfridges, I wanted to highlight that those relationships actually started smaller and organically with local shops that carried your oils. So, yeah, talk to us about building a network of connections within the food community and with locals to begin with.

11:06Yeah, I mean, I personally love the local independent shop. You know, the mom and pop, the one that has, they are thoughtfully sourcing themselves every product. They know a lot of the producers behind their product or they know the stories. Sometimes you're just going to pick up your standard milk and bread every time, but often you go into those stores to find something special. So starting with them at the very beginning when I thought, are we just going to be a D2C business? But quite quickly, we had friends in hospitality who had had to convert their bars, restaurants, cafes into shops because they couldn't actually, you know, no one could go out for a cocktail anymore, but they could turn it into a bottle shop.

11:41And when that happened, we had some of them reach out and they were like, could we stock your olive oil in what was once this amazing cocktail bar, but now it's a grocery store or, you know, selling beer and wine. And because our olive oil fits the script to be in a beautiful bottle shop, it looks like a bottle of wine. We had a lot of interest from particularly those sorts of conversions. And so that led us, I think, to get a bit of traction with independent shops during that year, which must have been 2021. Yeah, because we turned the website live and officially launched the business in 2021.

12:13and that led us into Selfridges. And for your international audience that doesn't know Selfridges, it's one of the most premium department stores in the world. It is definitely a halo account that others look to and you can just walk through their food hall and be like, oh my God, this is beautiful. Yeah, it's a whole other world of experience in my opinion, yeah. Fortnum Mason, I believe, was just a love of us loving them and us coming across their radar. and Waitrose was quite an exciting one. It was, again, an intro from the drinks buyer who used to be the olive oil buyer who was like, hey, there's a new buyer in olive oil.

12:53I think we should introduce you or let me know whenever you're kind of ready to be introduced. You know, Waitrose is, again, the ultimate, like, premium big grocery store group here in the UK. There's nothing quite like it, I think, even to compare in the US as far as, like, ownership and how it's run and how they make decisions. It's really a lot of thoughtfully sourced products, even their own brand. So it was absolutely like a privilege to go into a store like that as our first, when we were really not that big yet at all. It was an overwhelming listing. I can tell you we had to do a seed fundraise like immediately as we started to even have those conversations because the amount of capital we would need to do that, to buy all the oil that we needed for the whole year because there's one harvest a year.

13:39So you're having to buy a bottle, get everything set up at the start of the year and it's not gonna sell all the way. You'll have to wait 12, 14, 16 months until you get all that sold out. So yeah, that was kind of the journey into the bigger grocers. I love that because I feel like that's such an interesting tip because a lot of the times you logically thinking, I need to only know the pantry buyer, the person who's in charge of olive oil, but sometimes you can go about it in different ways and relationships kind of lead you to the path. So I love that you've worked with a spirits buyer and that's how the relationship kind of grew.

14:16So I mean, it's, yeah, it's been, it was that at the beginning, definitely, because, you know, olive oil is starting to change, thank goodness, but the category has been filled with these like entrenched global brands who have sat there for a very long time, not making any change. And I think a lot of the buyers also didn't see the need for like a new brand coming into the category or like that it wasn't a very exciting category. And so having another buyer, I suppose, who works maybe in a category that had a lot of disruption, like drinks or coffee or something like that, then maybe they're a bit more open.

14:50Because a lot of small businesses do tell me like, oh, like this buyer, like my category doesn't understand. And it's like, well, if you get somebody from a category that does understand disruption or challenge your brands, perhaps they can, they'll be excited about it and they'll introduce you. But some of it is just old fashioned, like sales grit. But, you know, the Ocado buyer, which is another listing that we absolutely love. They're such an incredible group in general, like the whole leadership and everything behind Ocado. I tracked down the buyer. I did everything to get myself in front of the buyer, like at events, like a crazy person, you know, like sat down at their table at this like networking event, followed, went to a B Corp event that I knew they were going to be at, did everything.

15:27If my buyer is listening, she knows that I've probably done this because I did stalk her. But yeah, it was because I knew we would be the right fit. And I think that's also it. Like, don't just go because you want your product listed. It's like I knew commercially, I knew who their audience, their customer profiles were. I knew what other brands had been able to do and what worked and what didn't. So I literally knew like your customers, our customers, we've already surveyed our customers and they tell us that they shot from you. So it's exactly the profile. So I think going not just blindly like, oh, I want this listing, but like, no, we are right.

15:56And here's like the data to back it up. Yeah, it's prepared persistence. Of course, like you mentioned, the seed fundraise, I believe, is over 2 million euros for that round. How is that experience like? Just because, you know, you're working with these retail relationships and then at the same time you're developing these investor relationships on top of building the business. And it's like a bit chicken and egg because investors don't really want to listen to you unless they know the sales are going to be there and the sales aren't there unless sometimes you have the capital. Like, I think it's amazing when people can come in with their own capital and don't have to fundraise.

16:30I'm like, I'm so envious of that process. You know, there was no money that we had, my partner and I, to start the business. We did, I think, a year and a half, two years bootstrapping, you know, fulfilling things from our flat and taking to the post office every morning and kind of running this as best as possible. But we kept selling out because as you grow, at the rate we were growing, we need so much more oil than even what we had sold. So you can't actually scale it without taking on investment to fund the progress that you're trying to make. Otherwise, you can just keep buying the same batch over and over, you know, the same amount.

17:01So, yeah, this was the first time that we went to some family offices. And we were so fortunate to have two incredible family offices come in who are both impact aligned. One in particular is their whole initiative is all around impact brands. I know it's hard because when you need the money, you kind of feel like you need to take it from anyone. But I would tell business owners, especially in the early days when you might have a little bit of time or space to find the right angels, the right investors, you want people there that understand your mission and understand how you operate, which was why having impact investors for our particular business was absolutely key.

17:43and so was it to have women on our cap table. So we are very proud that, I mean, I remember our first raise, I was like, okay, as long as we can keep the cap table at least 50 % female, like just equality, this would be great. And now with this latest one, you know, it's two female-led funds and who's sitting on our board are two women, which is very rare I'm finding even with other female founders. They are sitting on a board that is all a certain type of man and there's not even diversity often in age. And so to be with these like really energetic young women kind of leading the charge with us, we are very fortunate.

18:19But it is quite stressful because you're often having to say no or being able to take the money when you want to because you want to find the right match. Yeah. Well, it is a very important partnership, not just for your financials, but yet the values do really have to be aligned. Yeah, it's not just capital. This business is your baby and they are going to have power because they've given you money to make decisions about how you operate that. And I've just seen way too many founders feel overwhelmed or overrun or had to change their strategy. And of course, you want to take insights and you want to take learnings from people and they come with a wealth of experience from other businesses they're working with.

18:57But I think that alignment, it is like a family. I also want to highlight a little bit about the complexity of being in olive oil. You kind of touched on this because the need for investment is to fuel the farm to generate the oil for the year to come. So by taking the investment, you're also doing right for the farmers to make sure they also have payment for the production that they're going to do. But it puts a lot of stress on you because there's a lot of moving pieces. You're investing in inventory that's not going to arrive or know how it's going to potentially taste. So how do you manage like the anxiety, the runway, the cash flow of it all?

19:36Well, I would always taste the oil. I do really in-depth before that arrives. So I am sure of the quality unless something went totally wrong in transit. So, yeah, I think it's managed. I will say with the fundraise, it was interesting because I shared, we got some press about it, and I shared the link with our producers. And I was just speaking at the World Olive Oil Expo, which was in Madrid, and two of my producers were also there. And they were so excited about the fundraise. And they really do, they are a part of this business, and that's something we're trying to do more and more. How can we bring them into the business?

20:09How can we let them contribute to how we're, like, functioning as a business and everything from payment terms to how can we help them diversify their income, other ways we can collaborate with them. And the fact they were so excited, part of it is because when you're a startup, it's really risky for your suppliers, in our case, farmers, people who are at the first mile doing the work. It's really risky for them to sell you all of their product. Because if you're a startup, you might not be there in a year or two. And are they meant to cancel their other customers and prioritize you? So at the beginning, sometimes a lot of producers, they don't want to give you all of their stuff because they want to keep it even split just to protect risk over time.

20:44But as you grow and every year you kind of prove yourself, okay, can I buy more? And they're like, they get a bit more comfortable. They'll cancel some of their other, you know, customers. They'll produce more and more for you. And this fundraise in particular, one of my farmers in Portugal, like it's given them confidence, like, okay, like money's in the bank. Sarah can pay. Not that we didn't pay before, but just like, okay, we can see another harvest. It helps them kind of plan. And so this is something we're trying to offer them some security, you know, some arrangements that they understand when we can pay them and how much we can commit to and that the money will be there because farmers have it so difficult.

21:20They are literally gatekeeping, you know, not only our food that's on the table, they're in charge of that. They're also in charge of the landscapes and have a huge weight on their shoulders when it comes to climate because they're feeling the impact acutely every day. and now with this they're coming to me with their ideas around okay here's what we think we want to do and here's how we think we can grow our business alongside yours which is really incredible when you can have partnerships like that with your farmers that they're able to kind of plan their own personal missions for their farm and their vision of what they want to do be it maybe get their own mill or you know update this warehouse or buy some more land all of these things that they feel confident when they're in a secure place with us and that's what we're trying to create for them And because the relationships are so integral and one-on-one, how do you think about managing those relationships as you scale as well and nurturing them as you're growing?

22:12What we're starting to do is now that we have these kind of pockets and I suppose key producers in every region that have the energy, have the mentality, have the commercial sense, have the excitement to kind of want to scale a bit. We are starting to identify them and work through them because that allows us to create these networks. So our producers, not only do we financially incentivize them to refer other producers, and they know my checklist because they're just as strict. So they're going through and finding, OK, here's this incredible woman in my region, and she stopped tilling two or three years ago, and it's organic.

22:47And, oh, I found this grove. The farmer's not doing anything, but it's organic. They'll let me manage it. We'll bring this into our mix. So we're really using the network of farmers to expand the network of farmers and have them as almost like, you know, regional heads in their own way. And that's why this year we are bringing our original producers from last year. So there's 12 of them, different producers, coming together in Portugal at one of our producers' estates, one that's like this beautiful regenerative grove who also has her own mill, to kind of come up with some of these plans for how we can grow together and, yeah, how we can support them, but how they can kind of support other farmers and build it up together.

23:24I love the network effect that they're creating. And I love how far you've come from just like the initial idea to how much you've built. I guess for new founders who have an idea to enter into an industry that might be a bit older, established, intimidating. Nothing is older than an introduction. That is true. Yeah. I guess what is your advice for not feeling intimidated to not turn back to actually try to make the change that you want to see? So in Olive Oil, we're a very young brand compared to most of the brands, almost all the brands on the supermarket shelves were the youngest that's sitting up there.

24:02So they have, you know, decades of experience doing this. But I came at it with wanting to learn everything. Those years before we even launched the business, it was listening to every podcast we could find on Extra Virgin Olive Oil. It was calling up all sorts of experts, international judges. It was going out to harvest, to mills, talking to producers. You know, our holidays were just like dropping into Portugal and going to meet every producer, you know, in this like two hour radius that we could find. And I think if you really want to disrupt a category and you need that confidence, which is what I needed, because I was like, who am I?