TOBY’S STORY:

The Real Olive Company began life in 1993 in Cork’s English Market, when Toby Simmonds, at the age of twenty, took a small stall at the Princes Street end of the market. The stall began with just ten varieties of olives and a few other Mediterranean foods. The Cork public were equally surprised and bemused by this addition to the market, and a common enquiry was “what kind of grapes are you selling?”

The only fat/oil we use extra virgin olive oil from a traditional coop in Spain. We have spent 28 years souring the most honest, well produced and unmessed with foods from around the Mediterranean. We work to avoid additives, dyes, chemicals and unnatural methods of production in the foods we source. Toby has a very strong conviction that this will not be compromised for price or convenience.We collect the waste whey from our cheese making for a local farmer to spread on his land to enrich the soil on his land.

ETHICAL GROWING TECHNIQUES | PRACTICES:

The Real Olive Company strives to present their customers with both value and the best quality. They go to huge lengths to source products that are natural and not packed with additives. They never use refined oils on any of our products, and have only dealt in extra virgin olive oils from regional producers or cooperatives. The Real Olive Company pride themselves on being able to sell olives that the supermarkets could not sell, and have introduced Irish palates to many foods that could only ever have been found in their native countries. They have diversified into other related projects over the years, but their core business is still the importing and sale through markets of the finest Mediterranean foods that they can source.

We buy our olives from different Mediterranean countries either in 200ltr drums which when empty we then sell to be used as water collection butts or compost barrels or in large square metal tins approx. 20kg capacity which are recycled when empty.