Ciao! again...
The email makes more sense if the Title is included.
Apologies for the confusion!
Thank you, as always, for reading.
Lea Ann Vessels and Oliva Bella
In 2004 we started selling Oliva Bella in the Lexington Farmers Market which meant customers could only purchase once a week. Once we turned people on to amazing and authentic and high quality extra virgin olive oil from Italy, they could not live without it.
For the record, I still cannot.
We had ALOT of Olive Oil "Emergencies" (I am not joking.) - Customers would show up at my house sometimes late at night in the middle of cooking dinner (or maybe I was) to tell me that they had run out of oil and to ask if there was any way they could buy more. Then and there. Often we had none bottled (remember the story about bottling IN the van at the farmers' market and handing it out the window...) and we sent them home with olive oil in wine bottles, mason jars or any other container that was available.
So we decided to open a shop.
Key things to know about our first olive oil shop:
- We found a dilapidated building in an iffy part of town that had been a tattoo parlor, a childcare center, a mechanic's garage, and more in its previous life.
- We painted the inside "Tuscan yellow" (according to the guy at the paint store it was school bus yellow.), and we filled it with most of the furniture from my house including 2 sofas, 2 dining tables, book cases, lamps, most of my dishes, platters, pans, fotos...wine.
- We got the mechanic's garage certified as a commercial kitchen and outfitted that with equally dilapidated recycled ovens and refrigerators that we purchased for $40 each. We typically burned through those stoves in a month or so, salvaged parts, set them on the curb and by the time we walked back into the shop they were gone. Then we would slide in a few more ovens in to replace them.
- Our customers became our employees ("how can I be a part of this"?). The shop was ALOT of work, in addition we already had very full time jobs but it felt like family and food and friends and smelled like your Italian grandmother's house...even if most of us were not Italian. Whether we knew it or not at the time, we built it to be a place where WE wanted to hang out. People spent hours sitting in our shop smelling and tasting the sauces cooking in the garage, umm, I mean kitchen, drinking Cuban coffee (more on that in another email.) and talking food. And buying olive oil.
- We were a Tasting Room which started with the olive oil and balsamico but quickly became other products: sauces, condiments, pasta, breads, and anything else we put out for customers to taste or that we came up with for Family Lunch on Saturdays and that people wanted to buy.
They wanted to buy everything in the shop. And I mean everything...
- Employees often came to me asking if a platter or dish or painting (or dining table!) was for sale. I said yes to most. Revenue is revenue!
- We also showcased a number of products from our fellow market vendors and began to sell those as well.
- In Winter we rented our parking lot for University of Ky basketball games and I spent many very cold nights as the parking attendant making hot chocolate, pouring wine and olive oil shots for parking customers, driving them to the coliseum when it was too cold to walk and selling ALOT of olive oil on those evenings!
- We (me) also took a tray of shots of olive oil with bread to share with cars sitting at the traffic light in front of our shop. You would be amazed at how many I convinced to come in! You would not be surprised at how many rolled up their windows and locked their doors!
- On Saturdays we cooked, prepared and shared amazing lunches for all our employees (since we had a full house working the shop and at least another 2 teams working the local farmers markets) and of course we would have a glass of wine to celebrate the day. Soon customers learned to arrive during those lunches. We always shared, and they always became part of the celebration (and family).
- Our Marketing budget was exactly the cost to buy a pad of paper and pens; we put hand-written signs on the sidewalk (10,000 cars per day passed our shop.) and our most famous was "Honk if you love your Belly". It was there for only a weekend but people blew their horns LOUDLY For 3 weeks after!
- We found Italian chestnuts to "roast on an open fire" at our first Christmas party...the open fire was me with a grill in the parking lot and singeing my hair!
Thank you for indulging us the following gallery of photos from these early days. They were exciting, really challenging, long...and wonderful. Mostly because of the people. Our employees and customers became friends, including many of you reading this now.
And thank you for continuing to be our amazing family and community.
THIS...is OUR Oliva Bella. | 
