`An 'Oil Change' Helps Two Greek Companies Stay Ahead - Olive Oil Times

An 'Oil Change' Helps Two Greek Companies Stay Ahead

By Costas Vasilopoulos
Aug. 13, 2012 09:17 UTC

The largest fast food chain in Greece, Goody’s, is prepar­ing all of its meals using olive oil instead of palm oil, and only extra vir­gin on their sal­ads. The com­pany called the pol­icy a big step for­ward and said its menu was char­ac­ter­ized by great vari­ety and the care­fully selected ingre­di­ents founded on the val­ues of Mediterranean cook­ing.“

According to com­pany exec­u­tives, the 2009 oil change took two years of prepa­ra­tions, and it was the first time that a restau­rant chain started to use olive oil exclu­sively.

Such inno­va­tion is one rea­son Goody’s has become Greece’s lead­ing restau­rant chain, despite the com­pe­ti­tion from pow­er­ful multi­na­tional rivals like McDonald’s.

In another pio­neer­ing use, a meat pro­duc­ing com­pany, Creta Farm, is using extra vir­gin olive oil in fer­mented dry and semi-dry meat prod­ucts as an ani­mal fat sub­sti­tute. The fat is being removed by hand and the olive oil is incor­po­rated into the prod­ucts (turkey, sausages, ham and hot dogs) as a health­ier ingre­di­ent.

Several of the prod­ucts have been cer­ti­fied by the American Heart Association as heart-healthy meats and, even though the price is a lit­tle higher than the con­ven­tional prod­ucts, the accep­tance by con­sumers has exceeded expec­ta­tions. Creta Farm’s pro­duc­tion method has been patented in Greece and other European coun­tries and the com­pany is export­ing its prod­ucts to Spain, a major mar­ket for dried meats. The pro­duc­t’s suc­cess has led to legal actions from two rival food com­pa­nies over the patented method.



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