Crucial Assistance

I am involved with The Olive Oil Source as the owner, I farm 4,300 trees and I mill that fruit in our own mill. In addition, we mill olives commercially for a lot of small producers totaling somewhere around 20,000 - 40,000 trees worth of fruit depending on the year. As written earlier, much of my time is taken up with consulting work. The only way all that could possibly get done is with really good employees (and my wife's help). I thought I'd write a bit about some of the great people who work here.

At The Olive Oil Source, our relatively new general manager, Brian Gloria, has been doing a fabulous job. His background is on customer service in the food industry with experience in retail, specifically in tasting bar management, so he is perfectly familiar with what a lot of our clients do and understands customer service like few others. His experience in this capacity has given him knowledge in tasting room designs & concepts as well as customer purchasing decisions and tendencies. He believes customer education is fundamental to success as the tasting rooms that make it are usually the ones that have a heuristic approach to learning about the olive oil industry and work to bring people and food together.

Having also worked as operations manager for a catering department handling school lunch programs, he also has a strong background in food preparation processes, quality control, health standards, etc. The daily preparation and delivery of 1,500 - 2,000 lunches also honed his process management skills. He led marketing efforts to maintain and acquire new schools and helped in opening two new concept locations for that business.

All of this is perfect training for running The Olive Oil Source. Couple this extensive experience with his enjoyment of connecting with people that share similar interests and he becomes someone all our customers should get in touch with. Having a hand in the operation of olive oil tasting rooms has given him the ability to connect, interact, and share in the customer experience of olive oil education. His knowledge is invaluable as he has actually tasted, used, and enjoyed the products we sell. Since coming on board to The Olive Oil Source, an equal focus of his has been learning about production and processes used in the field for growing, harvesting, processing, and testing, thereby rounding out his knowledge of the products we offer. In addition, he is a joy to work and interact with!