Ayvaco
Umut & Erin, Third Generation Olive Oil Producers
Birlik Family Gathered in Ayvalik, Turkey at Thanksgiving
···
Saturday Grower Season Farmers Market, May-October: F-Shed
Saturday Holiday Season Farmers Market, November-December: F-Shed
Product: Olive Oil
···
Ayvaco is an immigrant story, and a love story about family, food, and health. Umut & Erin met in 2014 in the UK where they were both college students, and from those early days this olive oil was important to their relationship. Umut is an amazing cook, inspired by his mother and the Mediterranean diet he grew up with, and he would cook for Erin regularly.
Ayvaco USA has won a Silver Award at the 2022 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, the world's most prestigious olive oil quality contest! Read more here.
Erin remembers exclaiming one day, “Why does this taste so good?!” That’s when Umut explained that he only cooks with his family’s olive oil from Ayvalik. "I was intrigued. Growing up in Central New York we only used butter and vegetable oil, so I was curious about this fresh olive oil and the difference it was making in the taste of my food. That was the start of a five-year brainstorming and research phase to learn everything about olive oil and the industry in the U.S. We learned that thousands of small mills produce the world’s olive oil supply but that half of global retail sales are bottled by a handful of large corporations. And that most of the olive oil coming to the U.S. from abroad is a blend from many different countries, olive varieties, and even harvests dates, leading to the flat, tasteless oil that many of us are familiar with. We learned that there is a huge gulf in the market between cheaper, refined olive oils and the very expensive EVOOs – upwards of $30, $40, even $50+ a bottle. When we gave out small bottles of Ayvalik oil as wedding favors in 2017 and our guests said they had never tasted olive oil like it before, the wheels really got turning about bringing this product over to share more widely. We knew people would be interested in a family-owned extra virgin olive oil coming straight from the source without any middle men, blending, or rebranding, just organic goodness straight from the trees. Ultimately, Ayvaco is about celebrating traceability in olive oil production, tying the product back to small producers, and championing high quality at a fair price. The business is our passion project and keeps us connected to Umut’s family on a daily basis.”
Today, this entrepreneurial husband-wife team brings single-sourced, single-variety extra virgin olive oil to the U.S. from Umut’s hometown of Ayvalik, Turkey. The town is defined by its history of olive oil production and is known throughout Turkey and Europe for producing a beautiful, mild, smooth olive oil, but is largely unknown in the U.S. Erin shared, “Our family’s oil has been sold in Ayvalik for years but never under a label. The two of us had to learn from scratch how to start a small business, create a bottle and label, and all of the rules and logistics related to international trade. It’s been hard but also a lot of fun and we are just getting started. All of our oil comes from just a few thousand trees among the 2.5 million in the Ayvalik region on the west coast of Turkey, Umut’s hometown. There are hundreds of varieties of olives grown in the world, and the Ayvalik variety produces a mild and smooth oil that the region is famous for.”
Erin also expressed their great appreciation for open air markets. "Olives and olive oil have been sold in open air markets for millennia, and we feel proud to carry on a piece of that history by selling Ayvaco at the Regional. We drew connections between Ayvalik’s markets and the Regional immediately. Farmers markets provide us access to organic and fresh foods that our bodies need to thrive, often at better prices and with more selection than grocery stores. They support the local economy and serve as a gathering place for people to share, learn, exchange, and visit with people in their community – an ancient tradition that people have practiced for thousands of years around the planet. In that way, shopping at farmers markets today keeps us connected to people and history from thousands of years ago. When I first visited Ayvalik in 2014, I was completely blown away by the abundance at the town’s historical open-air markets. The food was massive, fresh, colorful, locally-sourced, and affordable. Shoppers walked around with entire grocery bags of tomatoes, or lemons, and waddled as they walked under the weight. Most people were in pairs or small groups, I quickly learned this was essential in order to carry home the haul. Despite growing up in a rural community, I had never shopped at a market like this. We lived twenty minutes from a major grocery store, and the weekly shopping always seemed like a chore. I remember thinking as I stood in the Ayvalik market, ‘these people are so lucky to have access to all of this fresh food’. Funny how sometimes, we have to go far away from home to appreciate what we have right in our backyard. The Regional Market has been a source of fresh and local food in CNY since 1938. A staple of the city of Syracuse for decades, it’s wild to admit that I had never visited until recent years. As vendors, Umut and I are excited to be sharing our family’s olive oil with those in CNY who may have never tried the product straight from the source. Olive oil cannot be produced in CNY, or the Northeast for that matter, and participating at the market, for us, represents a bridging of the global and local as well as an appreciation for what our faraway homes have in common.”
