It’s well-known that here at Elite Pubs, we try our very best to support and supply local food and drink businesses as much as we possibly can with 85% of our food and drink coming from within 25 miles of an Elite Pub. However, some of the products we use we simply have to source from the country in which it originates!
This brings us on to our Kalamata Olive Oil and how it came about us sourcing from Kalamata itself! There are some weird, wonderful and totally random stories from Elite Pubs, but this is definitely up there with the most impulsive!
Our owner travelled to Kalamata in June 2019 (Péloponnèse, Greece) on his way to a small village called Kardamyli for a 5 day break. He jumped in a taxi and got talking to the driver, his name was Nikos.
They got talking about olives and Kalamata which is an extremely popular place to grow olive trees because of the climate, the terrain and loads of other factors!
Nikos then explains that he has his own olive grove of about 280 ancient trees and was fed up selling his olive oil to the local cooperative for 3.5 euros per litre.
The money wasn’t his main problem but mixing his single grove outstanding quality olive oil with all others broke his heart at each harvest.
Our owner was really interested in learning more about the process of making olive oil. Once they arrived at Kardamyli, our owner asked Nikos to pick him up in 5 days to head back to the airport.
During the next 5 days, our owner was finding out from our Chef about our yearly consumption, prices etc to see whether supplying Nikos’ olive oil is something we can do! 5 days on our owner is back with Nikos on his way back to Kalamata airport and told him that he has a small group of pubs and restaurants in England and wanted to buy all of his production. The first batch was delivered to us mid-December of 2019. We are now buying all of his oil including his neighbour’s oil.
Sometimes sorting new suppliers takes a while but not this time! Our olive oil is used in many if not most of our delicious dishes and we’re so excited to be supporting a small business!
Read more about our local suppliers below
