 Welcome to Adventures in Small Business, a collaborative effort by the U.S. Small Business Administration Hawaii District Office, Hawaii Small Business Development Center, the Patsy Teeming Center for Business and Leadership, and the Veterans Business Outreach Center of the Pacific to showcase the stories of local entrepreneurs and small businesses. I'm Colleen McLooney from the Patsy Teeming Center for Business and Leadership, and today we have Brian and Anjel Foster from Island Olive Oil Company. Welcome. Thanks for having us, Colleen. Thank you so much for being here. So, let's see, today we want to start out with, well, I know, why don't we just first start with where your stores are located so then that'll give everybody an idea of what we're talking about. Okay. Well, currently we have two stores. We have the one that's at the Ward Center. It's in the Ward Village area. It's real easy and convenient. And then we also have another store that's in Kailua, it's in the Kailua Town Center, right on Kailua Road between Miochi-Ram and in California. Oh, fantastic. So, the Ward location was your first. Yes. How long have you been there? Seven years. Oh, seven years. Fantastic. And then how long have you been in Kailua? Just over two years now. Oh, okay. Oh, wonderful. That's so exciting. Oh, that's a big leap, too, for our small business to go from one location to two. Yes. That's it. Congratulations. Thank you. A little stressful at first, but after the dust settles and you start to see the bits of your labor, you kind of get a little more ease. You're like, okay, thank you. Right. Right. Oh, but that's fantastic. Congratulations. Thank you. Okay, so why don't we start out with sharing your background and about yourselves and how you got started with the Olive Oil Company? Interesting story. We both have very diverse backgrounds. We both grew up locally. Then we both went to school in the mainland. She was involved with fine arts, design, things of that nature. I was in finance and I went, 9-11 happened. I joined the military for a while, got into operations, went into defense. I was overseas a lot for what I did for work and she was more or less here most of the time. She was my rock and it was great because we were ready for a change and we talked about it and it was time for me to be more stable and be at home more often and we kind of just were talking and developing new ideas and new things. The Olive Oil Company, it was a match made in heaven because we're both really, really big into food. We've always been big nutritional people and everything else. We took a chance and that's what entrepreneurs do. We all have to take that leap of faith. We said, you know, there's no turning back now. Once we closed this door of very successful careers that we were in and transitioned into something new, it's a little stressful. But we did it and we haven't looked back and we're fortunate and blessed. Well it wasn't completely new because we both had a lot of background growing up in different food industry jobs. Ryan worked for several years putting himself through college and when I was young, my mom had a restaurant and I have lots of family members that have had restaurants. So we spent a lot of time working in food in the back of the house and all the different aspects and learning about small businesses and how to run them. So that was kind of... That's extremely helpful. Yes, yes. Oh, fantastic. Okay, so you decided to buy the business and or start the business and then let's see. So, okay, so your motivation was that you were ready for a change and that you wanted to take a new... Spend more time at home. Spend more time at home. In Hawaii. Correct. Excellent. Excellent. It's always so interesting to hear what motivates entrepreneurs to start their own business. It really is. I mean, I was gone, what, 10, 9, 10 months out of the year? Early midlife crisis. Yes. Good motivation. Need a change. I was always on the road. Oh, you know. Right. It was just something we could do together was, you know, we both decided to bring our different... It was good because we could both bring our different strengths, the creative side and the operational side. Right. It's a match made in heaven. So can you share with us how maybe how hard it is being an entrepreneur? I know there's good sides too, but a lot of people, it's easier to share the harder side sometimes first. But it always is. I'll start with this. If it was easy, everybody would do it. You know, when you work for, I worked for a Fortune 500 company and when you're working for somebody else, you feel that motivation, but you're going in every day, you're getting a paycheck. You know, you can go home at night. Not a lot of stress. It depends on the position you're in, of course, you know, digress. But when you're an entrepreneur, not only do you have to worry about all your employees, you have to worry about yourself, you have to worry about all these different things and factors. You have to worry so many different hats. You're the finance guy, you're the marketing guy, you're this person, this person, this person. And you're like one of those circus performers. You've had, you're juggling all these different balls. Nobody just keeps throwing more and more balls at you. Oh my God. And it never stops. And it never stops. It's 24-7. Yes. You know, but... 25-7 sometimes. Yes. Yes. But that's the stressful entity of it. You know, people, like you said, people want to talk about the negativity aspect of it. But the positive aspect of it is the reward that's seen people and the smile on their face. You know, we have some of our customers that come in and they're so thankful that we have these products that we have. You know, we are a little bit flexible. We can kind of make our own schedule. You know, we technically work 24-7, but we can, it's like, okay, if I really need a day off to go to the beach or something or we can do that, but you have to weigh them. It's very, very rewarding. It doesn't always feel like work when it's work, even though it's a different feeling. I think you have a little bit more batteries in you when you're, you know, working for yourself. Right. Got a lot of skin in the game. Yeah. Exactly. Oh, yes you do. Okay, so tell, let's see, tell me a little bit about some of the challenges you've encountered becoming entrepreneurs and being entrepreneurs and how you've handled them or the outcome for them. I'd say a lot of the other business owners that I've talked to, we all face the same things. The biggest one is labor, you know, getting the right staff in place. Hawaii is, of course, for such a low unemployment rate and getting good, qualified candidates in the door to help, because if, you know, as an entrepreneur, if nobody's there to work that shift or nobody's there to do that job, if it falls on us, exactly, you know, we're the ones doing it. So labor is, is the big, the big portion of things. Absolutely. Once you hire people keeping them there, you know, people move on and they're, you know, building their own lives. You know, as soon as you have someone trained and they're with you for a little while and then, and they can get hired away. Yeah, right. That's a challenge. Another challenge that we faced was the educational aspect of olive oil. A lot of people think that, you know, what they've been consuming their entire life is quality stuff. And so we have to educate all the loved customers that come in. We educate the chefs. We go and do teaching classes so that people are informed about what you're looking for in the quality oil, how that relates back to them, the difference between a fresh oil and a fresh versus a non not so fresh, I should say not so fresh oil. Right. The difference is night and day. Like the tickle in your throat. Yeah. Absolutely. So we're constantly educating and reinforcing that with our customers. You have a great amount of education then for your employees and too for your staff. Yeah. Absolutely. Oh, amazing. So what do you, what would be, do you do like a, for a new hire, I'm sorry, for a new hire, do you spend, you know, a certain amount of time, like do you give them a week or what, I mean, it's a month or two months or months, multi-months? You just said it. Program? The initial, the initial startup phase is we have, we give them a book of knowledge. And that's what it's called, island olive oil book of knowledge. It breaks down all the differences about olive oils, balsamic vinegar, scorn may products, water truffles. We go into this whole thing of it. So when we bring on somebody new, we're training them for an entire month and then after that month is up, then we kind of let them, let their wings let them fly a little more economy to them. And then, but we're, they're constantly learning as well. Because there may be things that come up in a conversation with a customer that we've never thought of before. And they'll call us and they're like, Hey, you know, know about this? Yeah. It's always a new question. There's always a new question. Because somebody read something somewhere, somebody saw something. New recipes. Yeah. And you know, so we're constantly evolving and transforming. But we do train them. We do work with them for probably a month, at least that they go with another, another staff member and mainly Brian, the real trainer. That's an incredible amount of time. It's a lot of time to invest. Right. Amazing. A lot of labor hours. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. For sure. Oh. It's wonderful to know though that your staff is so well educated. That's one of the things people, we, one of the biggest comments that we get is the customer service and that is the experience and customer service is what people look for. And nowadays there's so many places to spend your dollars that having those good experiences really matter. Well, it makes it, it really helps when you know that you're going to a retail store that has so much, they have so much knowledge about their product and then it makes you want to part with your dollar more because you realize the value of it. That's fantastic. So, okay, let's see. What about the competition that you have at Ward and Kailua for the products that you're carrying? How do I put this nicely? No, we don't really have, I'm sorry. No, no, no, we really don't have any direct competition. We have indirect competition with grocery stores and things of that for our dollars. But in terms of the freshness and quality, we have everything that's lab tested. Nobody else can tell that. We also have the freshest quality oils. A lot of people, we go the extra mile to make sure that we're the creme de la creme of all of Olavol's and Balsamacanaga. So people that know and they've gotten into it, they keep constantly coming back to it. So we've got a great recurring business that happens. People that refer us, the refer doctors, I don't know where these guys come in. They refer their patients to us and say, if you want to quality oil, go here. Because they take it as a nutraceutical, so it's very good for antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties. So they're not only cooking with it, they're actually taking like a shot of olive oil. We do have a number of customers that use it as a nutraceutical supplement. Okay. So are there specific oils for that or is it more their choice of flavor when they go into the store? I mean, do you have a specific oil for that just to drink? That's an excellent question actually. So the fresher an oil is, the higher, it's called polyphenols, which is the antioxidants, anti-inflammatory, so it's good healthy properties. So as an olive oil, as soon as it's crushed, it starts getting older. So olive oil is only good for up to two years from the time it's actually crushed. So with that being said, think of it, you crush an olive and it's on a downward slope as soon as it's going, right? So it doesn't matter about when you open the bottle. It starts going. So since we're always rotating and we're bringing in the freshest, highest quality stuff, doctors will be like, hey, go there, you get that stuff. So we have it in the stores labeled out from mild to robust. And once we have it lab tested, we know what the phenolic content is within that oil. So a lot of these people come in and say, well, where's the high polyphenols? And they know. They're like to the right. So it's the right. They're like, OK. They don't care what it tastes like, although it is delicious. But they just want the one that has the highest polyphenols. So generally speaking, a commercial oil will probably have under 100 polyphenols. And our highest polyphenol oil we've ever had has been a general. Over 1200. OK. So that's a lot of anti-accidents. And what is the doctor usually recommending that they would want a polyphenol? High polyphenol. I don't know what. I am not a medical professional. Oh, yeah. No, I understand. I thought they might come in and say, oh, I want this amount. No, no. They just, they come in and they say, my doctor told me to come here because I need high polyphenols. Say this is the one. That's high. I don't know if he specifically recommends a certain number. I don't know. But it's a great referral and recommendation source. And that's a wonderful addition for your business, too, is the nutritional side, too. Absolutely. That's fantastic. My biggest recommendation with that is you can get that nutraceutical supplement in just making a salad and cooking with your high quality olive oil. Right, right. So, you know, it's great to have it that way, too. Great. OK, well, we're going to take a break right now and we will be back in one minute. Thank you. Hello, I'm Marcia Joyner, inviting you to join us on Wednesdays at 1 o'clock for the Cannabis Chronicle, the 10,000-year odyssey where we take a look at cannabis as food, cannabis as medicine, cannabis and religion, cannabis, and dear old Uncle Sam. So, please join us to learn all about cannabis again Wednesdays at 1 o'clock. Thank you. Hi, guys. I'm your host, Lillian Cumick, from Lillian's Vegan World. I come to you live every second Friday from 3 p.m. and this is the show where I talk about the plant-based lifestyle and veganism. So we go through recipes, some upcoming events, information about health, regarding your health, and just some ideas on how you can have a better lifestyle, eat healthier, and have fun at the same time. So, do join me. I look forward to seeing you and hello, Hal. Welcome back to Adventures in Small Business. We're here today with Anjel and Brian Foster from Island Olive Oil Company. We just had a great conversation about the nutritional value of olive oil, which is fantastic. And let's see. We are going to show some photos, I think, right now of the product, and we can talk about that, and then a picture of you in your new store, I believe. Is it the Kailua store? Yeah. Let's take a look at the pictures. Okay. So what are we looking at here? Right here, we have our Mediterranean citrus dipping blend. So a lot of people love to have herbs with their olive oil so they can dip bread, but we also use these for general cooking. You can add a little bit to salad dressing, to mix a salad dressing up. Use it to saute and roast veggies or with chicken. I use it for making soups, as well as our brownie kits and our popcorn kits. So we do a lot of little take and bake kind of goodies, and you can use it as a salad. That sounds wonderful. That's great. Okay. And then let's see our next picture. Ooh, what's that? These are shrubs. So these are our white balsamic vinegars, and they're already infused with fruit flavors, which is what a shrub is. So you can use them as a refreshing drink mixer. And right here, we've got a cranberry pear white balsamic with, and you can add a beautiful ruby red color, and just a little seltzer water and some mint. And there you go. You've got an alcohol optional beverage. Oh, that's fantastic. That looks wonderful, especially right now. Yes, exactly. We're doing this hot summer we're having. Very thirst-quenching and probiotic. Ooh, terrific. Okay. And then our last photo. Great. Is this the new store? That is. That is the Kailua store. I'm not sure this timeframe, when this will be taken. That's right around when we did an opening party with the Kailua Chamber of Commerce. That's right. That's right. Yeah, I remember that. Okay. And so there you can see the olive oil to the right of Brian there. You can see, is that olive oil there? That is actually white balsamic vinegar to the right. Oh, okay. If we're actually looking, the direction that we're actually looking would be towards the olive oils, towards our special tools like our truffle oils and things of that nature. But we have over 50 different varieties, so you can taste everything, and that's kind of how the store is set up so everyone can taste it. So you can see the little taster bottles on the side. Right. You can come up, grab some cups, and have some fun and enjoy. Oh, that's fantastic. Taste the difference. You can try almost everything, at least where the olive oil and the vinegars and all the gourmet products, anything we've got, like honeys and jams and topenades and salts and all kinds of things. It helps you to understand and know what you're actually getting. And it's part of the experience, and it helps create that, you know, really, and thoughtfulness in all of our customers get really enthusiastic about trying them. Right. And then as far as recipes for customers, I know that you have some on Instagram that you post pretty regularly. Yes, we do. And we're also doing, we have a lot on our website. We're always putting them on our Facebook page. And we're actually, we just had, we're doing a lot of recipe development right now. Oh. Great. And are you guys the recipe developers? Are you guys test all of your own recipes? Yes. Mostly. I get to test them. She creates them and I get to test them. We just, we just did an olive oil cake. We just did a, we just did a smoked olive oil, olive oil hummus. So we've got lots of really diverse, yummy kinds of fun things. That's so good. One goat cheese salad, so all different kinds of areas. That's also, it's not just her that's doing it or myself. You'd be surprised because you, you build that social on Instagram and people will actually post some recipes that they've done before and it just, it's built that momentum and we'll share it. It's a real community. Yes. Community effort. Oh, that's fantastic. Okay. I'm going to have to check that more often. Definitely. Okay, great. So let's talk about maybe some lessons that you've learned as entrepreneurs or insights maybe that you could share with other small businesses. Well, one thing I will say from a retailer is location, location, location, location. Location is everything. You want to think about the development in the area that you're doing your lease. You want to think about, you know, what the future plans are for the, that community and if your business fits that environment, you want to think about what kind of neighbors you have and if their customer base is complimentary to yours. So if you have neighbors that have shops or restaurants that have a similar clientele, that's a really great fit for you and you'll get a lot of crossover business and can do cross collaborations. Also, you want to think about foot traffic, right? You want to think about our, and parking. Parking is a big thing here in Hawaii. It's amazing, but you know, people really need to have that ease of parking. That's a big issue, you know, so location. Just really investigate your location. Fantastic. Have you got another insight, maybe, or? No, before we, before we, I was just going to touch on, based on that, before we opened up the Kailua location, we were actually going out there several times a week, different times of the day, just kind of taking a look at the foot traffic, seeing what was out there, sitting and watching, getting an idea and taking it all in, that kind of helped our decision making process. Whether or not you want to be freestanding or do you want to be in a mall. I mean, those are like all really good questions to ask yourself for a small business, running out. Definitely. Definitely. Oh, thank you. Thank you for sharing that with us. So, let's see. What is your vision of success then for Island Olive Oil Company? Is it changing all the time? Is there one big goal you're looking to achieve? Lots of things, yeah. I would say two things that really stand out to me, more or less, it defines success for us. One, is not worrying about the business when you go home at night, because a lot of entrepreneurs do still sit there and they have things, and if we can minimize that to a certain level of degree, I think it gives you a lot of peace of mind. That's part of it. And I think the other part is knowing that you made an impact in the community. When we're at the gym working out, you know, I remember one time I'm walking down the stairs and just another patron at the gym was walking up the stairs. He says, oh, hey, I know you. You're the olive oil guy. And it's like, oh, you know, I'm like, thank you. It's like, I've got your stuff on my counter at the house. And that is like, you know, it's almost a huge connection. Yeah, it's a huge phone. You didn't even know about it. Exactly. And it's just, it's very gratifying and very, you know, fulfilling. It's like, wow, okay, they've got, we hear these stories all the time. Hey, I've got, I love your stuff. It's so awesome. You know, I've got it as a gift, or I've got it at that. That kind of, that's our incentive and that's our drive. Makes you feel really good. You know, it's just a sign of success when people have your product. When people recognize it. Yeah. Exactly. When people recognize your brand. That is pretty good. Definitely. We do appreciate that. And they recognize you specifically, too. Very hands-on. Very hands-on with the business, and I think that's what you have to be to be an entrepreneur. Well, customers really appreciate that. They really do. They do. Yeah. Okay. So our next question then is where do you see yourselves in about five years? We won't go to ten. Constantly evolving. Lake Homo. Yeah. That might be the ten-year mark. Okay. I mean, probably a little. Yeah. Maybe twenty. I don't know. But, you know, the business is constantly evolving, it's constantly changing and morphing with the times, right? So, we eventually want to go east, and we want to take west from Hawaii. We've got other locations to look at. We can look at licensing in Japan. Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific, Australia, things of that nature. So, some exporting, maybe. Correct. I can't. In fact, there's a class that you guys are doing on exporting. Right. Thank you. Awesome. And I'm actually going to be attending that class, because it's going to give me some insights. And I'd love the classes that you guys put on. What was the last class that you did with the Google Analytics? Google Analytics. There's such a resource for everyone that we can always get involved with. We're always learning. But that's kind of where we want to be, licensing. That's very exciting. And more e-commerce, I'd say too. Maybe two stores. One, definitely. We've already got that in the works of where we want it to be. We're just waiting for things to finalize. It's a little file a little bit, so stay tuned. Right. I can't wait to personally know if there's going to be another store in the works that's going to come in here. Oh, that's very exciting news. Yay. I can't wait to find out about that. The new baby. Yes, that's right. That's right. And then I think you have a collaboration coming up soon with Alan Wong. Yes, we do. We're really excited about it. Chef Alan Wong and his team have been huge supporters of our business, as well as wonderfully gracious customers and user products. What they are doing is called a omokase drink. Omokase. And they're using our balsamic vinegars as shrubs to create a little flight of cocktails and delicious, delicious nauseous, delicious nauseous to enjoy. Oh, that sounds very exciting. Very exciting. Very exciting. Oh, good. And that's coming up within the next couple of weeks? Yes, it's coming up next week. Oh, okay. And they do it for a limited time. It's like a special run. Oh, okay. It's not just a one night event. No, it's going to be for a week. So you can call and make reservations or go on Alan Wong's website. Oh, okay. Oh, that's wonderful. That sounds terrific. All righty, great. And then, let's see, I just want to mention one other thing that you were a part of was the KCC Culinary Fundraiser. Yes. Great point. Thank you. The KCC Culinary Team, popular in the community college, of course. We've been supporters of them for a few years now. And they, it's the national championships. Again, we just got word the other day that it was completed, that they got the silver medal. So they got second place. Right. We did a huge event outside, inside the ward store in that area. And we raised up a few thousand dollars from the team. Very excited about that. We'd like to help promote them. We kind of helped them give back to the community as well. You know, the community has been great to us. So we need to reciprocate and give back to others as well. Oh, that's fantastic. And support young chefs. Right. That's our business. Education. So innovative. Innovative in what they do is incredible. They sell minds. It is. It is. It's amazing. It's amazing. Well, we're going to wrap up. I just wanted to remind everybody about the Shop Small Hawaii Initiative that we have at the Pati Tuming Center, Business and Leadership, along with the SBA partners. So if you are a small business, please don't forget to register on Shop Small Hawaii. Island Olive Oil is going to become a neighborhood champion in Kailua. And if you have any questions or need any information about that, please don't hesitate to contact us at mpblhawaii.org or shopsmallhawaii.com. And we do have that exporting workshop coming up on the 28th of this month. And that will be at our YWCA Kokokahi location. And it will be from 11 to 1 at the Brown Bag Lunch Seminar or workshop with Mary Dale from the SBA district. All right. I want to thank Brian and Anjale Foster from Island Olive Oil Company today for joining us on Adventures in Small Business. And I hope to see you again next month. Thank you.