We’re continuing our ‘people behind the brand’ series by finding out more about Olive Branch Co-Founder, Kamil.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE FOOD FROM CHILDHOOD?
Pasta. My best friend at school was half Italian and from the young age of 7, I’d look forward to going to his house so I could enjoy some authentic Italian food – seems like I was always destined to be a foodie! I learned a lot about southern European food from his family and this definitely helped to shape my love of Mediterranean cuisine.
WHAT DO YOU DO IN YOUR SPARE TIME?
Any spare time I have, I try to spend in the garden. In the evenings, I’ll potter about the garden, thinking about what to plant and different colour combinations in the beds. I have a small veg patch where I grow lots of herbs and salad ingredients. This year, I planted cucumber plants for the first time. During the summer, we took a trip to Greece for a week – it was the week we had 34 degree weather in England and my neighbours kindly watered the plants each day. On returning, the baby cucumbers had grown into long full sized cucumbers and I was pleasantly surprised to see such a big transformation in just a few days. My challenge for next year is to grow from seed.
WHAT’S THE BEST PIECE OF ADVICE YOU’VE EVER BEEN GIVEN?
At a previous company where I worked before setting up Olive Branch, an ex-colleague once told me “turnover is vanity, profit is sanity” – It was a renewable energy business and we’d experienced massive growth thanks to the solar feed-in tariff, but this suddenly dropped as the tariffs were drastically cut. We were in a conundrum as our business infrastructure and personnel had increased during the boom. As we implemented a turnaround strategy we exercised this principle of safeguarding profit rather than chasing turnover, so we could look after the personnel and mitigate redundancies. This advice is really important for us at Olive Branch. Not long after we started our business, Greece went through its most difficult years and the capital controls created challenges for producers and companies exporting out of Greece. Just as Greece was getting back on her feet, the United Kingdom has entered the period of exiting the European Union – as we import our products from Greece, we’ve felt a shockwave from the currency markets but our conscious efforts to manage our costs and run our business efficiently have paid dividends in allowing us to safeguard profit.
WHICH IS YOUR FAVOURITE OLIVE BRANCH PRODUCT ?
It has to be our extra virgin olive oil. I still remember the day Maria’s mother sent us a big parcel from Crete, loaded with the family’s freshly pressed extra virgin olive oil. This was long before we had set up Olive Branch and was my first time to taste extra virgin olive oil so fresh – literally 2 weeks after it had been pressed. I became lost in the flavour and couldn’t stop talking about it! This was one of the first triggers for us to think about doing something with Maria’s family’s olive groves, so our extra virgin olive oil will always have a special place in my heart.
HOW DO YOU USE IT?
On everything! Conventional cooked dishes, dressings and vinaigrettes, for breakfast with toast and honey, baking cakes.
WHAT IS YOUR TOP COOKING TIP?
Don’t skimp on your extra virgin olive oil. I meet so many people who go on holiday to Greece and rave about the food. They then come home and try to recreate the dishes and complain about how they never taste the same. I usually ask them which extra virgin olive oil they are using and 9 times out of 10, it’s a cheap supermarket olive oil – sometimes not even extra virgin! Oil is the foundation of the dish and if you build upwards using a great quality base, you will transform the end dish. Slow cook your onions and garlic in great extra virgin olive oil – and don’t hold back on the quantity – you will be amazed at how the flavour of the oil imparts into the other ingredients, lifting them to another level.