Growing Olive Oil Sales at Grocery
I conducted more than 250 hours of consumer-facing olive oil tastings in 2019 in the Southeast at stores, events, my farmers market stand and my mobile olive oil truck. What I learned is that there are two types of consumers: those not interested in the product or putting oil in their mouth, and aspiring foodies, including most Millennials, who travel, like to cook, desire the health benefits of using extra-virgin olive oil, and are learning on the fly how to smell and taste the product for home and restaurant applications. My success rate — conversion from a sampler to a purchaser of the brands for which I was holding tastings — was 80%, or eight out of 10.
Certainty 3: If the olive oil industry — growers, producers, bottlers, marketers — and resellers don’t take a more proactive approach to category messaging, usage reductions, the race to the bottom on pricing and promotions, the dumbing down of quality, and truth in labeling, there won’t be a stabilization of the olive oil category and the better-quality brands will likely move away from selling in the United States.
Terms like sustainability, traceability, blockchain, award-wining and fresh, are all on trend, but the olive oil industry needs to work together to finalize the Standards of Identity within the FDA and then build consumer-focused promotional activity to enhance awareness of this item, like the Got Milk? and Where’s the Beef? campaigns did for their respective industries.
Today, the industry is fractured, with multiple associations hewing to separate agendas, which include differing views of evaluation of quality and grades, imports versus domestic production, and even tariffs imposed to penalize Spanish bottled oil. It’s all too chaotic.
Spurred by education for both the trade and consumers, olive oil could be as respected as organic foods now are, with the industry all working together to ensure that the consumer has access to a wide range of properly labeled, appropriately priced extra-virgin olive oil, which they can open and taste to confirm that they purchased what they meant to.