A New Generation Leads Laconiko to Excellence

Summary

Diamantis and Dino Pierrakos defied their father’s warn­ings and trans­formed their fam­i­ly’s olive oil busi­ness in Greece into an award-win­ning enter­prise in the U.S., hon­or­ing their father’s legacy after his pass­ing. The broth­ers over­came tra­di­tional prac­tices, oppo­si­tion from within their fam­ily and com­mu­nity, and logis­ti­cal chal­lenges to build a suc­cess­ful busi­ness that pro­duces high-qual­ity olive oil.

“Mark my words, you’ll regret this,” admon­ished their late father every time Diamantis and Dino Pierrakos schemed another rad­i­cal change.

Good thing the ambi­tious sons didn’t lis­ten.

The Pierrakos broth­ers co-own the Laconiko olive oil com­pany together with their two sis­ters and mother. They grow Koroneiki olives on a coastal estate in south­ern Greece that their fam­ily has owned for four gen­er­a­tions. They bot­tle and retail their oil exclu­sively in the U.S.

While their mother and sis­ters work mostly behind the scenes, Diamantis and Dino are the pub­lic faces of the oper­a­tion, which has trans­formed from a source of worka­day liveli­hood into an inspired enter­prise that pro­duces award-win­ning oils infused with the family’s vision, mis­sion, pas­sion and pur­pose.

The broth­ers shared their vision at a Smithsonian Institution sem­i­nar in Washington, D.C., in February. Curtis Cord, the pub­lisher of Olive Oil Times, led the sem­i­nar and guided tast­ing to teach par­tic­i­pants how to rec­og­nize and eval­u­ate high-qual­ity olive oil. Together with their busi­ness part­ner and brother-in-law, Elias Zarkadoulas, the Pierrakos broth­ers were guest speak­ers at the sem­i­nar.

To con­tex­tu­al­ize the prized oil guests tasted ear­lier in the after­noon, the broth­ers told the story of their whirl­wind jour­ney that began dur­ing the 2008 har­vest.

Mrs. Pierrakos and her four chil­dren immi­grated to the U.S. in 1989, while the fam­ily patri­arch, Vasilios, remained in Greece. At least one brother would return to help their father with the annual har­vest. As was cus­tom­ary in their vil­lage, they sold their fruit to mills that exported to Italy.

That piv­otal year, Diamantis sensed that some­thing was trou­bling his father. With Vasilios near­ing retire­ment, the Pierrakos’ had to make a life-alter­ing deci­sion about the land and the 5,000 olive trees that were con­sid­ered part of the fam­ily.

One option was to sell the estate and reunite Vasilios with the fam­ily in the U.S. That would mean let­ting go of fer­tile land their ances­tors had cul­ti­vated since the late 1800s.

Unwilling to relin­quish the roots of the fam­ily legacy, Diamantis floated the idea that had recurred through the years: to pro­duce their own, sin­gle-estate oil under the fam­ily name.

“We decided either we are going to be the best or we’re not going to do it at all,” said Diamantis. ​“We poured all our love, pas­sion, tra­di­tion, heart and soul into it.”

The broth­ers con­vinced their father to allow them to har­vest a small quan­tity of olives early. They asked fam­ily and friends to taste their exper­i­men­tal oil and the feed­back was pos­i­tive. In 2009, they began small-scale sales of their own branded oil in the U.S.

They con­tin­ued to make fun­da­men­tal changes to their pro­duc­tion process, over­com­ing oppo­si­tion within their fam­ily and com­mu­nity. Ever the tra­di­tion­al­ist, Vasilios was skep­ti­cal of his sons’ ambi­tion, repeat­ing his warn­ing that their plan was mis­guided.

“We were seen as crazy,” said Dino. ​“Our father was con­ser­v­a­tive and accus­tomed to the stan­dard prac­tices. We were going against tra­di­tion.”

Working from their Virginia home, they con­tin­ued to grow the busi­ness in the U.S. and improve the pro­duc­tion process in Greece. If a retailer agreed to a demon­stra­tion, the broth­ers would drive to the store, no mat­ter the dis­tance. They’d meet briefly with the retailer, only to turn around and drive back home, some­times log­ging hun­dreds of miles in a day.

When they entered com­pe­ti­tions, they asked to see the judges’ notes to learn how their oil was eval­u­ated. They scru­ti­nized their pro­duc­tion process to iden­tify where the defi­cien­cies were occur­ring and they made more changes.

“When we started chang­ing our pro­duc­tion and putting qual­ity before yield, it was a time when few Greek pro­duc­ers were win­ning awards,” said Diamantis. ​“We wanted to rep­re­sent Greece and show the poten­tial of Greek oil to com­pete with the best in the world.”

In 2014, they won a sil­ver medal at the Los Angeles International Extra Virgin Olive Oil Competition. As they con­tin­ued to win major awards annu­ally, their father’s resis­tance qui­eted. The broth­ers felt vin­di­cated and con­fi­dent that their risk was pay­ing off. They went on to win awards in New York.

Tragedy struck in December 2016, when their father died dur­ing the har­vest.

“He lived to see many of our suc­cesses and wit­ness our hopes and dreams come to fruition,” said Diamantis. ​“He was proud of us and he died doing what he loved. We know that the best way to honor him is to con­duct busi­ness with the same val­ues, sin­cer­ity and pas­sion that our father instilled in us.”

Laconiko oper­ates a tast­ing room in Manassas, Va., open to the trade by appoint­ment only.