Getting Filthy with Daniel Singer of Filthy Food
I talked to Daniel Singer in New Orleans about how he is transforming the olive to cater to the drinks industry… sustainably.
My interview with Daniel
Hi Daniel, I understand your business started with a journey with your brother.
My brother had been working on a documentary for two years and upon his return, I invited him to join me on a quest to find the perfect olives for cocktails. Little did we know that the journey would last two years.
Why olives?
Why not? Seeing the best bars in the world using awful garnishes for cocktails amazed me and in turn, I saw the opportunity to make the drinks people love, better. And this started with giving bartenders and consumers an olive brand to love. As an entrepreneur, I saw the opportunity to create a global business. I saw the white space in the untapped olive market which had no brand attached to it. I saw the billion-dollar potential and went for it. What we initially thought would be a 3–4-month adventure turned into a 2 year expedition looking at over 200 varieties of cultivatable olives across the Mediterranean. Our journey took us across Italy, Greece, Spain, France, and Portugal. The oldest olive tree we looked at was 4,000 years old.
Where was that?
In Crete. Suddenly you understand that these trees could have been around in Biblical times. You start to think about the symbolism of the olive branch, crowning victors at the first Olympic game. An experience like this really opened my eyes. I knew there was an opportunity to make the drinks people already love, better, but it became even more significant that we had a responsibility to create something beautiful.
90% of the world’s olives are made into olive oil. The other 10% are going into table olives; it’s very highly commoditized. And most of these are being cured using lye or caustic soda. Even the organic ones – it’s appalling. You can call it organic if there’s no residue left in the final product. If you are using chemicals to cure, you can still call it organic. After learning this, I knew we could (and we would) do things, better.
And we did. We don’t use a chemical curing process. Our olives are naturally fermented over the course of 4 months in salt and water as opposed to 4 days with chemicals. We did this so they retain the rich, nutty, and woody flavor usually associated with olive oil.
Who was curing naturally at that time?
Nobody was naturally curing olives. During our travels we met lots of different families and individuals who would cure olives at home, but nobody was doing it with any sort of scale. Even in California they adopted the Spanish fermentation method which is with lye.
Lye. (grimace)
If you watch videos of the Californian olive growers, they’re standing in front of giant vats that say lye on the side. But here’s the thing, it’s used in food production all the time. And it’s not a bad thing, but what it does is thicken the skin of the fruit. It shuts down the pores and takes everything out of it that we love. Chemically curing strips olives of their natural characteristics, so high amounts of salt and oil must be added to give the fruit flavor and texture. That’s why these olives create that slick on top of your martini.
Wow. So in essence, you industrialized the naturally cured olive category?
Yes, like I said, we were on a mission to make the drinks people already loved, better. After learning so much about olives we knew we could be better, and armed with this knowledge, we were able to convince a family to naturally cure 4,000 olives for us.
In what country?
Greece, Halkidiki in the Peloponnese region.
And what happened next?
After naturally curing 4,000 olives over the course of 4 months, we took those 4 barrels back to the states and went door to door to bars selling olives out of the back of my wife’s minivan. To add some color, at this point, my wife Kim and I had three young children which also gave me even more reason to build and scale the Filthy business.
We started local but our vision was global. When we first brought these 4 barrels back to the states we found a great family in Countryside, Illinois that were making Italian giardiniera and because the production facility was not running at full capacity there was room for them to pack olives.
They became our co-packer at the time and enabled us to get started. I lived on South Beach at the time and would get pallets of olives delivered to me on 18 wheelers. My garage served as our first warehouse and my wife’s minivan was the vehicle (pun intended) for every Filthy delivery at that time. In the morning we’d pack our three kids into the car. After dropping them off, I would take out the seats, pack the van with pallets of olives and start making deliveries to bars and restaurants. And when pick up time rolled around, I’d put the seats back in and what was once packed with olives became packed with my lovely children. This went on for 5 years.
From the family in Greece curing our initial 4 barrels to the family in Illinois, to using my wife’s minivan to deliver door to to door to bars, relationships have played a huge role in the Filthy story. Which I love. Because the brand was built on relationships and on authenticity. We do what we say we’re going to do and we treat every person we work with like family. This is how we built the business. At the beginning there were so many acts of kindness where people didn’t have to help us or support us or tell their friends. We saw so much love from bartenders and to this day, they have played the largest role in the creation and sustaining of the Filthy brand. We wouldn’t be who we are today without them.
Oh, by the way, why are you called Filthy?
I grew up the oldest of four children. My brother and I are really close in age. He’s only 10 months younger than me. And then the twins came along two and a half years later. So it was four of us kids all together. And it was always raining in England. It’s pissing down all the time. So we were always outside playing and getting covered in mud. Which was just completely joyful as little kids without any pressure or stress. We were just outside laughing, playing and getting filthy.
And my mom would always say to us, “You’re bloody filthy, we’re just about to go out – we’ve got friends coming over. You’re filthy!” So Filthy became a way of looking at life. I always say, it’s not about dipping your toe in. It’s not about getting a little dirty. It’s about getting Filthy. Because that’s where the joy is. Committing fully to that moment and that experience.
What are your products?
Filthy makes premium cocktail mixers and garnishes. Our blue cheese stuffed olives and Olive Brine are perfect for martinis and our Wild Italian Amarena Black cherries and Black Cherry Syrup are perfect for whiskey cocktails.
Our Filthy pickle and Filthy pepper stuffed olives are perfect for Bloody Marys.
We also produce delicious cocktail onions perfect for Gibson Martinis and maraschino cherries which are delectable in Tiki Cocktails. The newest additions to the Filthy line up are our premium and all natural cocktail mixers featuring our Bloody Mary mix and Margarita Mix in sustainable pouches.
In short, we currently offer:
Olives: Blue Cheese, Filthy Pickle, Filthy Pepper, Pimento, Pitted
Cherries: Black Cherry, Red Cherry
Onions
Mixers: Margarita Mix, Olive Brine, Bloody Mary Mix, Black Cherry Syrup
We are constantly innovating and have many exciting product launches in store. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more about our entire product line up please visit our website.
What about your team, how many people work in Filthy?
There’s now nearly 50 people.
Do you do team building? How do you keep the people united?
First of all, you know, Martin Scorsese said the majority of directing comes down to the casting process, 90% of the film happens in casting, so we've got a very clear philosophy inside Filthy which is “kind killers”, essentially, great people that are decent respectful, polite humans that are not going to sacrifice our long term vision for a short term win. They have deep integrity, which is really about your ability to withstand pain. Your own personal pain threshold, as opposed to sticking somebody with something or telling somebody a lie.
Kind Killers. So that’s the kind part. What about the killer part?
Killers part is that they’re all absolute axe murderers, in the sense that they want to win. We all have a chip on our shoulder that was born somewhere-- I think all human beings do, we just need to tap into it. It expresses itself in negative responses. The killer’s part is that they harness that negative energy to turn it into a furnace.
I always felt like I was born in a furnace. I’m constantly on fire as a human being. So as a kid it can be very destructive. They say to understand entrepreneurship you should start with juvenile delinquents. So I'm constantly on fire as an older person, as a father, as a husband. I have harnessed that energy and now that fire just becomes warmth and light; it’s not destructive. I'm not gonna try to burn anything down or hurt anybody.
Did you get in trouble as a kid?
All the time.
And your wife is very gentle person?
No! My wife is the reason that I can do anything. And she's my human. I think your whole childhood potentially winds you up and then you spend the rest of your life trying to unwind what happened in the first 18 years, who am I, why am I meant to be this way? One of the things.. so I think I tend to find my people and stay there. I met my wife, we kissed a week later, and moved in together a week after that, and it’s 23 years now. She’s my person.
You are originally from the UK, when did you move to the US?
My dad moved to the US with my brothers when I was 13. I stayed back with my mom and my sister. I was getting in trouble in school and I moved when I was 18 to get a fresh start. I moved back to the UK in my early 20’s, them went to drama school and got recruited to the Royal Shakespeare company…
Do you miss living in the UK?
No. I miss the people, but is America is such a massive part of who I am. It's such an optimistic place. America has given me and my family an incredible opportunity.
Let’s get back to the team.
Everybody is very powerful. It’s a very diverse team but at the same time, very committed and passionate. We are a community that wants to serve a community, we want to give guests better experiences.
Where will you be 5 years from now?
At Filthy it’s all about growth through focus and ensuring we can deliver on what we promise. Right now our focus is on expanding our distribution and going deeper vs wide in the channels that show us love. We’re seeing a lot of opportunity in the travel space with recent partnerships with Virgin Voyages, Virgin Hotels, Marriott, Delta and other airlines. Filthy will be a global brand, however we are still just scratching the surface in the United States. Let’s stay in touch on this one. Big things are always happening here at Filthy.
Where you can find Filthy Food
Instagram: @filthyfoods
Website: filthyfood.com