Olives&More

Who's behind it

Olives&More started small and grew from a baker's cargo bike to a fixed delicatessen shop in Amsterdam East. The focus stayed narrow throughout: olives and Mediterranean products you know exactly where they come from. The premise is simple and stands large on the shop front and website: direct from the farmer. They buy directly from growers in Spain, Greece and elsewhere, and the olives are hand-picked rather than mechanically shaken.

This shortens the chain. No intermediaries mixing batches from different origins into an anonymous bucket, but batches you can trace back to a region and sometimes to a specific grower.

What really makes the difference

Origin sits here at batch level, not as marketing text. With olive oil, Olives&More works single origin: one variety, one region, one harvest. Think organic Arbequina from the Veá family in Catalonia, or Kalamata olive oil from the Peloponnese. That's a different product from a blend where the origin is no longer traceable, and it tastes like it.

Hand-picked is not romance but technique. Whoever picks instead of shakes bruises the fruit less, and a less bruised olive stays firmer and cleaner of taste in the brine or marinade. For you as chef that means an olive that keeps its bite on the plate and a marinade that tastes clean.

How to set yourself apart

Put the origin on the card. "Hand-picked olives, roasted garlic and parsley" reads differently from "mixed olives", and it's true too. Name the region with the oil: a finish with Arbequina from Catalonia or Kalamata from the Peloponnese tells your guest in four words why the plate can cost more.

Build a line with it: the same oil you cook with you use to finish, the tapenade sits under the fish and on the appetiser board, the olives stand with the antipasti. One supplier, traceable origin, and a story you don't need to invent because it's simply true.