#458 Kristi Linebaugh - Canary Island Garlic & Herb Olive Oil

Canary Island Garlic & Herb Olive Oil is the name given to Kristi's business partner's great grandmother's special recipe. Pour it over fish and it's like eating a Michelin star meal. It was a secret sauce that captivated the people who came into contact with it. These people included some very famous marketers including Dean Jackson and John Carlton. Kristi and Graham both are members of Flint McGlaughlin's MeclabsAI Guild. Kristi has been around since God was a lad, and Graham a more recent joiner.Kristi's Bio I grew up the child of entrepreneurs. My parents owned grocery stores,a beauty shop, hobby shop and rental properties. My parents taught me at a young age to do what you love... and you'll never have a dull moment... my parents became cosmologists because there was a beauty salon for sale! My dad then got a gig doing hair for the local funeral home customers... he never did get a complaint.😉North Caroline State University Fast forward I went to school at North Carolina State University and double majored in Communication and Social Work... then with one class left to graduate with two degrees... I chucked it all behind, moved to Florida and opened a coffee house. We were the first coffee house in the area (this was 1994) and people didn't know what Cafe Latte's were and would often call them Cafe Ladies... one person who didn't turn out to be a customer funnily enough.... said... "You really think you'll sell hot coffee... It's Florida! I said... We have frozen coffee too!How to Cook Eventually people caught on and loved our little Cafe Latte shop and wanted to eat there and began asking for lunch... which was a huge problem... because I didn't know how to cook! So I said to my business partner, "All these people want to eat here but I don't know how to cook, what do we do?" She said, "Well I'll make my great grandmother's secret recipe and you just Splash it on everything and people will think you know how to cook!" Well it worked, we ended up winning 13 People's Choice Awards, and I would tell our customers... You don't have to know how to cook when you can Splash! Our customers went wild over our secret sauce and harangued Miriam to please bottle her sauces to which she replied, "I've already got two businesses. I don't have time to start a seasoned olive oil company as well." Soooo.... customers started bringing in empty jars on their own birthdays and really big jars on Christmas and requesting "fill-er-up" gifts of our secret sauce.. gifts for themselves... from us! After seven years they finally talked my business partner into bottling her secret sauce and we officially named it the Canary Island Garlic and Herb Olive Oil in honor of her great grandmother's heritage. And began doing live events. We ended up going on tour every year for 2 months and would close our restaurant for the summer and go up north to do shows with our hand-blended seasoned olive oils. In 2016 we returned to a yucky surprise when we came back to find our restaurant had been destroyed by a flood (from our neighbor) the insurance refused to rebuild and eventually we ended up selling our gutted restaurant building and going on the road full time...  But... not all is lost ... I like to say, "We had over 20 years in the restaurant business... we just went out with a Splash instead of a bang! And went into the "secret recipe" business.Canary Island Garlic Herb Olive Oil Our Canary Island Garlic Herb Olive Oil has been sold in Whole Foods Markets, gourmet shops, specialty food shops and online as well as in our restaurant. We've been featured in multiple magazines, t.v and even did a guest appearance on NPR (National Public Radio) We've co-authored 3 books and done over 800 live events, probably more like 1000 by now... I...