HONOLULU (KHON2) — If you enjoy cooking, chances are you like to use olive oil.
And even if you don’t cook, the folks at Island Olive Oil Company can get you impressing your family and friends in no time with their product line and tutorials.
Angel Foster at Island Olive Oil said “It’s like being a kid in the candy store for foodies. We got all different flavors of dark basalt mix light basalt mix. Flavored olive oil’s pure extra-virgin olive oil’s.”
Step inside either of the two Island Olive Oil locations at Ward Center or Kailua, and it’s like stepping into a specialty in Italy or Greece.
“It’s got a little bit of green almond but also little cinnamon and paprika. Piqua’s gonna have that green tomato grassy more Spanish style oil,” said Foster.
Angel Foster said taking over the business was a natural progression, in that it brought together three of her favorite things. Her love of food, travel and sharing.
“My background is an art and education. So I love explaining and educating people how to cook recipes and different things like that,” said Foster.
Angel said it’s more than just being a retail outlet, she wants to interact with customers and share her love of cooking.
“The really fun things about this business is working with their customers and teaching them recipes doing cooking demos and classes and things like that. When we really started building the business we started working with a lot of chefs and caterers working with culinary students it’s been a lot of fun doing live demos and cooking demonstrations,” said Angel.
But then COVID happened and like so many other businesses she was forced to pivot.
Turns out it opened up a whole new channel for doing business.
“Yah we had to change and make some quick adjustments instead of doing a cooking demo videos we couldn’t do that so we started creating our own cooking videos and our own YouTube channel,” said Angel.
“The response has been great. Everybody loves a quick video. And we try to keep on the pulse of different food trends making it very accessible for home cooks and keeping it find a delicious and easy to make,” said Angel.
Another change born out of necessity was offering drive-through pick-up.
With so many flavors to offer Angel said her favorite part of her job is being able to help everyone from the novice to the experienced cook find that a-ha moment in the kitchen.
“People can be intimidated by all the different flavors but we show them different pairings different tastings and even helps just the simplest home cook table at a lot of fun and interesting accents to their dishes,” said Angel.
Angel said her recipe for success is the same as it’s always been.
Angel said “It’s having a great team of passionate people that work with you being excited about food and love helping to educate and be a great resource for customers. Don’t be intimidated to cook? I know because I figure if you have to eat to survive you might as well make an enjoyable right?”
