BOZEMAN – If you want to make a great meal, you need great ingredients. But what do you do if you can’t find those ingredients?
Folks in southwest Montana looking for quality oils, vinegar and seasonings have found Bozeman gourmet store Olivelle to be a premier destination for years. Recently, the organization was recognized nationally for its products.
Lack of choice was the reason, according to Olivelle co-founder Brie Thompson, why she and her mom started the business.
“We were unhappy with the quality of the products that were available in the industry,” Thompson told MTN. “So we started buying the raw goods that we knew were of high quality, and we started making our own products.”
Olivelle now makes over 150 products, items available not only to the community of Bozeman but also globally. Olivelle has about 65 wholesale stores across the country, as well as a few stores in Canada and a newly-minted location in Oslo, Norway.
“We work with mom and pop stores that are really focused on customer experience and customer service,” Thompson said. “We set them up with our entire oil and vinegar on-tap cask system, and then we sell them all the goods [to provide for] their customers within their store.”
Each of the 150 products is packaged by hand with a special focus on one part of the process: quality. Olivelle’s meticulousness was recently recognized by the Specialty Food Association not one — but twice.
“We won the Best New Vinegar of 2019 for our vine-ripened raspberry balsamic vinegar,” Thompson said, out of 2,500 products. “It’s kind of like a food Grammy,” she added.
Olivelle also received top honors for the store’s business’s black garlic infused sea salt.
“They are ‘flavor changers’ in the kitchen,” she said.
And the work continues for the Thompsons. More stores, a strong online presence and new flavors, all under the same trademark name, are just around the corner.
Reporting by Chet Layman for MTN News
