How a father and son transformed their passion for real olive oil into Virnelli
In 2024, we started with the plan to launch a business together. What exactly, we didn't know yet, but we were convinced it had to be something with real products. Products with a story, made by people with passion. We couldn't have imagined that months later in Italy, we would fall in love with olive oil.
From bucket list to business
It started with a question Freek asked the family: what's still on your bucket list? The responses varied. Some found it difficult to come up with an answer, others couldn't come up with one at all. But Onoph was resolute. To the question of what he had always wanted to do, his answer was clear: entrepreneurship.
Freek didn't need to be told twice. On Onoph's sixtieth birthday, Freek handed him a letter inviting him to start a company together. Not a vague idea, but a concrete proposal: register with the Chamber of Commerce, open a bank account, and force ourselves to really make something of it.
Searching for something that truly suited us
What followed was a period of brainstorming and research. We explored multiple industries, but soon realized we wanted to stay close to ourselves. We asked ourselves one simple question: what makes us happy? The answer was always the same: food. Not just any food, but honest food with a story.
Calabria: the meeting with Cheda and Deborah
Through an acquaintance, we ended up in Calabria, in the south of Italy. There we were introduced to a series of artisans: one made organic soap, another ran a ceramic factory. We were invited to the opening of a restaurant and suddenly found ourselves at a table with prominent figures from Calabrian business.
But the moment that changed everything came when we joined Cheda and Deborah at their estate Timpa Bianca. After a bumpy ride on a dirt road, we reached their farm, hidden in the hilly landscape near Condoianni. What followed was a walk among the olive trees, an unforgettable family dinner, and our first tasting of real extra virgin olive oil. We were immediately sold. You can read the full story of this encounter in our blog about Timpa Bianca.
After our meeting with Cheda and Deborah, we not only fell in love with the landscape and the amazing country that is Italy, but especially with a specific product: olive oil. It represents so much more than an extract from an olive. It brings people together, it's the basis for countless recipes, and for many families around the world, it's their livelihood.
Setback: a failed harvest
Back in the Netherlands, we delved into the world of olive oil. We attended a tasting with an olive oil sommelier in 's-Hertogenbosch, spoke with a designer friend from London, and made plans to bring the oil to market. We were ready and decided to order one hundred liters from Cheda.
But then came the bad news: it had hardly rained all summer. Cheda had only been able to harvest twenty-four liters, where he had expected at least five hundred. For comparison: larger farms produce tens of thousands of liters annually. We were left empty-handed.
A chance encounter in Rome
As luck would have it, Freek was traveling in Italy with his girlfriend Yasmine shortly thereafter. During her studies in London, Yasmine had become friends with the Italian Elena, whom they visited together in Rome. During a delicious pasta carbonara, Freek told them about the plans with olive oil and the harvest problem.
Elena shrugged and asked, "But my friend also makes olive oil?" Behind the scenes, it turned out that Elena and Yasmine had been planning this for some time. And so began what would later become Virnelli's first delivery. You can read the full story about Marco and his farm Al Fornovecchio in our blog about Al Fornovecchio.
The first delivery and sold out
After weeks of emails, tastings, and preparations, we received our first shipment of olive oil from Marco in May 2025. One hundred half-liter bottles, twenty-five one-liter tins, and five five-liter tins. Each with a unique label, designed by our regular designer from London. Each bottle was numbered.
We began approaching friends and family and proudly presented our oil. The reactions were overwhelming. Everyone was surprised by the taste, and orders came in from all corners. Within a few months, we were completely sold out.
Growth with two farms
That gave us the energy to think bigger. And this time, we also got good news from Cheda. He had leased his neighbors' land, resulting in a production of eight hundred liters, of which we took 250. We also bought from Marco again, this time twice as much as the previous year.
The 2025 harvest was extra special: Floor, Freek's sister and Onoph's daughter, was in Italy during her gap year and personally helped with the olive harvest at Marco's farm. She stretched the nets around the trees, shook the olives loose, and manually loaded everything into crates, ready for the journey to the press.
We realized that our olive oil is best appreciated when people can taste it. That's why we started looking for physical sales points. Black & Blue in Nijmegen was the first to join, placing our oil prominently on the counter at the cash register. Shortly thereafter, Ieder Z'n Vak in Nijmegen followed, where we rent our own shelf.
More than a product
Slowly but surely, we see our olive oil appearing in more and more places. Not only among friends and family but also far beyond. We were interviewed by Indebuurt and even featured in De Gelderlander. We have now sent oil to friends in Belgium, France, Turkey, England, Germany, and even Bali.
But Virnelli is about more than sales figures. We want to dispel the myths surrounding olive oil: that you shouldn't heat it, that everything in the supermarket is good. The truth is that much of the olive oil in supermarkets is bleached, stripped of the healthy substances that make extra virgin olive oil so valuable. What exactly olive oil is, how it works, and what its health effects are, we will delve deeper into that in a separate blog soon.
What Virnelli stands for
Virnelli stands for real products, real stories, and complete transparency. We work without intermediaries, directly with the farmers. We know their families, their land, and their craft.
And we invite everyone to visit our farmers themselves. To see with their own eyes where your olive oil comes from. Because that's exactly the point. You deserve to know what you eat, and from whom.
Curious about our organic extra virgin olive oil? View our assortment or read more about our farmers: Timpa Bianca and Al Fornovecchio.