Data Will Define Next 25 Years at California Olive Ranch, CEO Says

Over the past quar­ter cen­tury, California Olive Ranch (COR) has grown from a sin­gle grove in Oroville, 100 kilo­me­ters north of Sacramento, into the largest olive oil pro­ducer in the United States.

The com­pany was founded in 1998 as a hobby project by a Barcelona-based fam­ily office and pio­neered high-den­sity and later super-high-den­sity olive tree cul­ti­va­tion in California.

The idea to plant olive trees in hedgerows allowed COR to har­vest mechan­i­cally, dras­ti­cally cut­ting costs and allow­ing the fledg­ling com­pany to start on its path to scale.

“We started with 500 acres (200 hectares) in Oroville,” chief exec­u­tive Michael Fox told Olive Oil Times. ​“Now, we have 5,000 acres (2,000 hectares) and 50 grower part­ners up and down the state.”

While the first 25 years for COR was defined by its push to achieve scale, Fox believes data will deter­mine the company’s tra­jec­tory over the next quar­ter cen­tury.

“Our approach to farm­ing has evolved,” Fox said. ​“When I came on board [in 2019], I wanted to invest a lot in data around the nutri­tion of our trees and irri­ga­tion uptake; all the ele­ments of get­ting big­ger fruit with more oil.”

The company’s 2,000 hectares of olive groves have been divided into blocks, each located in a dif­fer­ent region and micro­cli­mate.

Using a com­bi­na­tion of sen­sors, the United States Department of Agriculture satel­lites and 30 peo­ple out in the groves, the com­pany can see how trees take nutri­tion and their water needs monthly, allow­ing them to adjust through­out the year.

“We are look­ing at the trees block by block and then mak­ing adjust­ments based on what we’re see­ing,” Fox said. ​“Now, we’re track­ing every­thing a lot bet­ter with data. We will learn from these next cou­ple of har­vests and make adjust­ments.”

The heavy invest­ment in data is help­ing the com­pany to achieve its self-imposed sus­tain­abil­ity goals. ​“Over the last four years, we’ve adopted a lot of regen­er­a­tive agri­cul­ture prac­tices,” Fox said.

These include graz­ing live­stock in the olive groves, using min­i­mal till­ing and com­post­ing the byprod­ucts of the olive oil pro­duc­tion process.

Again, Fox said data dri­ves many deci­sions sur­round­ing the company’s regen­er­a­tive agri­cul­tural prac­tices, which he believes is nec­es­sary to adapt to one of the main chal­lenges fac­ing the com­pany and indus­try in California: cli­mate change.

“We’ve gone deeper into data, under­stand­ing our car­bon seques­tra­tion and the impact that our trees have on the envi­ron­ment,” he said. ​“Then we set goals for how we can con­tinue to improve that.”

Improving water effi­ciency was among these goals. To that end, Fox said the com­pany invested in sophis­ti­cated irri­ga­tion sys­tems to pro­vide pre­cise amounts of water to the trees at exactly the right moments dur­ing olive devel­op­ment.

Fox is also focused on soil regen­er­a­tion, rec­og­niz­ing that pro­mot­ing healthy soil, which retains water more effi­ciently than unhealthy soil, is increas­ingly nec­es­sary in a drought-prone state.

Along with adopt­ing these prac­tices in their groves, Fox empha­sized that the com­pany also uses what it has learned to advise its grower part­ners to help them become more sus­tain­able and effi­cient.

“Our part­ners love us because we were the first to do this and, can­didly, they like to say we made the most mis­takes,” Fox said. ​“We made mis­takes early on that they could learn from.”

Before join­ing COR in 2019, Fox worked as an exec­u­tive at PepsiCo and Safeway, a super­mar­ket chain.

Based on his expe­ri­ence in the gro­cery and snack food indus­tries, he is using data to tar­get pro­mo­tional strate­gies to cus­tomers at spe­cific times and drive the future of the company’s retail strat­egy.

“We are a con­sumer pack­aged goods com­pany, so we have to behave like one,” Fox said. ​“Data helps us make sure those invest­ments are pay­ing off for us and our cus­tomers.”

According to Fox, using data to drive pro­mo­tion adds to what he said was already a robust brand­ing strat­egy before he joined the com­pany.

Fox said COR grew more rapidly over the past ten years, helped by its dis­tinc­tive green bot­tle and win­ning qual­ity awards at local and inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tions.

“Today, we are the num­ber three extra vir­gin olive oil in the U.S. gro­cery chan­nel, and we’re the num­ber one 100-per­cent California extra vir­gin olive oil,” he said.

According to Fox, the com­pany has over­come chal­lenges of infla­tion, pro­duc­tion cost increases and three rel­a­tively poor har­vests over the past five years, increas­ing the amount of olive oil sold and total rev­enue from sales.

Fox attrib­uted the recent spate of poor har­vests to adverse weather con­di­tions, pri­mar­ily high tem­per­a­tures in January, caus­ing the olive trees to bloom pre­ma­turely, fol­lowed by frost, which dam­ages the devel­op­ing buds and pre­vents the trees from pro­duc­ing any fruit.

“Fortunately, we built a busi­ness model that can sus­tain that,” he said. ​“By hav­ing our Global Blend in California, we can sus­tain chal­lenges like that and still grow the busi­ness.”

Since its 2018 debut, the Global Blend has been con­tro­ver­sial. Other pro­duc­ers in the state accused COR of under­cut­ting their prod­ucts by sell­ing imported olive oils, which are often cheaper to pro­duce than California olive oil while prof­it­ing off of the California name.

Fox denied that COR was attempt­ing to under­cut other olive oil pro­duc­ers. To main­tain shelf space in major national retail­ers – a costly and highly com­pet­i­tive process – COR must dis­trib­ute a con­sis­tent num­ber of bot­tles yearly.

The com­pany orig­i­nally adopted this strat­egy after a poor har­vest in 2018 resulted in them import­ing oil from Europe and South America to meet demand. Since then, it has become part of their growth strat­egy, with about 70 per­cent of COR sales com­ing from the Global Blend.

“Still, our goal is to expand,” Fox said. ​“We are the most widely dis­trib­uted, but we only have 3 per­cent of American house­holds buy­ing California Olive Ranch.”

According to COR’s mar­ket research, the lead­ing olive oil brand in the U.S. is pur­chased by 14 per­cent of house­holds, while 58 per­cent are buy­ing any olive oil.

“There’s a huge oppor­tu­nity to increase house­hold pen­e­tra­tion through aware­ness,” Fox said. Along with cli­mate, grow­ing the con­sumer base for olive oil in the U.S. is the other main chal­lenge fac­ing the com­pany and sec­tor.

COR is work­ing to achieve this by rais­ing aware­ness about the health ben­e­fits of olive oil, pro­mot­ing the ver­sa­til­ity of cook­ing with olive oil, and work­ing to sell olive oil in dif­fer­ent sizes and pack­ag­ing for­mats.

“There’s a bifur­ca­tion in the needs. The peo­ple who are buy­ing olive oils are look­ing for health, taste and qual­ity, while the peo­ple buy­ing other cook­ing oils are look­ing for ver­sa­til­ity,” Fox said. ​“We need to edu­cate con­sumers that extra vir­gin olive oil can be ver­sa­tile.”

“For bang for the buck, this is prob­a­bly the best prod­uct you can buy in the store from a health com­po­nent and a sus­tain­abil­ity com­po­nent,” he added. ​“The more peo­ple under­stand that olive oil should be in your pantry is the way to get from 58 per­cent house­hold pen­e­tra­tion to 80 per­cent house­hold pen­e­tra­tion.”

Looking ahead to the com­ing har­vest, which will begin in the first weeks of October, Fox said he feels opti­mistic. ​“Things are look­ing good,” he said. ​“Especially because we’re com­ing off a cou­ple of really bad years.”

The com­pany is prepar­ing its har­vest strat­egy to ensure the olives have the high­est pos­si­ble oil accu­mu­la­tion before they start pick­ing and milling.

“This year, we’re ded­i­cat­ing our har­vest to Bob Singletary, who was our found­ing mas­ter miller and was with our busi­ness for many years,” Fox said. ​“Unfortunately, he passed away this year.”

“We have a very strong team that he trained,” he added. ​“He was a spe­cial part of our life, so we’re ded­i­cat­ing the har­vest and our Olio Nuovo to him.”