Catalan company Caviaroli sells fake olives 240 euros kilo and find out how from family garage to haute cuisine: Caviaroli, the Catalan company that is behind a fake olives sold at 240 euros per kilo.

” We were not the prototype of a startup that was born to create a technology, " Ramón Ramón begins by explaining about Caviaroli, the company of which he is CEO and which is behind the creation of a unique product in the world: olive oil caviar. Then they would follow 4 more patents, among which stands out, without a doubt, their drops, false olives whose price rises to 240 euros per kilo.

The company was born in 2011 and when it did, the product was no longer a scientific project but a business reality. "We worked at home and started the company when we thought there was something to sell," says the founder. And there was: the world's first olive oil encapsulation. It was a film of marine origin, which produced a texture similar to caviar. There was nothing like it in the world.

Of course, the road –like all that are not yet done– was not easy. "We started a journey in the desert that lasted 3 years", explains the manager and does it in plural because the history of Caviaroli can not be understood without his family: 5 generations of name Ramón and surname, too.

Catalan company Caviaroli sells fake olives 240 euros kilo

Caviaroli was born behind the door of a garage as other great business stories did, but instead of Sillicon Valley, the landscape is that of Esparaguerra, in Catalonia. Something before Steve Jobs created Apple, Ramón's grandfather had already done the same with the electric concrete mixer. That innovative appetite would pass from generation to generation.

“I don't play golf or tennis, the workshop has always been there for us," says the manager. The long and often late days in the garage were the germ for his father to develop a range of elements such as welders and cranes. Then he started to make machinery for vacuum cooking or the extraction of natural aromas. The challenge was to respond to the needs generated by chefs such as Ferrán Adrià, the Roca brothers or Torres.

"Cooking and science are very close," says the businessman and he is so close that one does not know where one ends and the other begins. And it is precisely among these diffuse lines that father and son move best. Both had technical training but, above all, an inherited vocation to go where no one had gone.

Catalan company Caviaroli sells fake olives 240 euros kilo

"Seeing the limitations of some of the techniques developed by the chefs and their innovative enthusiasm, we put our full potential to create new products," he says. This brought them-and this is what science is all about-to a level of disruption that created a culinary need that had not existed until then.

During this journey they found a high-level godfather: chef Ferrán Adrà incorporated spherification into the kitchens of his three-star restaurant El Bulli. He also did not hesitate to present it at Harvard's Science Cooking Lectures. All this pushed Caviaroli to land in the kitchens of half the world.

Despite the notoriety that Caviaroli was reaping, the premise of its founders was to be able to publicize the flagship product before launching to create others. It would take 2 years until other varieties such as sauces, vinegars and of course, their spherical olives saw the light, the result of extracting the juice from the cured olives and encapsulating them.

Catalan company Caviaroli sells fake olives 240 euros kilo

Apart from its creations, the company's approach has always been international. So much so that their first pallet of product was sold in Australia. Since then, and through its suppliers, its articles are present in more than 20 countries covering Japan, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Europe and America. These account for 50% of its turnover, the rest stays in the national territory.

Caviaroli, which has a team formed by 25 people, billed 2 million euros in 2019. However, the pandemic broke out and the hospitality industry, its main economic cushion, was strongly impacted and therefore, the accounts of the Catalan company: the turnover fell by 50% in 2020.

Faced with this complex scenario, the company had to enter-this time more deeply - in new markets such as the online channel, whose sales last year multiplied by 5 globally. An upturn that, they recognize, is promoted because they started from residual transactions, but also from a new rethinking of the web.

Catalan company Caviaroli sells fake olives 240 euros kilo

The company has also made a stronger commitment to the retail channel. Mind you, with nuances. "Our approach is the gourmet, so lowering the price was not a solution to anything", maintains the businessman. In this way, the products can be found in the Amazon marketplace and in El Corte Inglés, where Ramón recognizes that there is a constant struggle to place his products as a category of his own. They really are.

In this battle because the user understands that he is facing a single product affects, in part, the price: 50 grams of its encapsulated olive oil have a price of about 13 euros. This means raising the kilo to 200 euros. "We have achieved that in many areas our products are known but there is another end customer to whom we have to transfer things that they still do not know," he admits.

This, contrary to being a stone in the way, leads the company to go further: democratize the uses of haute cuisine. "We can still be the ones who make the escerifications, without calling them that, be in the homes," explains Ramón and in his speech he glimpses what is yet to come. The entrepreneur knows better than anyone what can happen when innovation finds a garage to hatch.