| Jennifer Woods |
| Glenn Wagner, Vice President of Sales - Retail Division for Sogno Toscano |
While doing some evening mall errands at Scottsdale Fashion Square earlier this month, we noticed an olive oil kiosk named "Olive Oil Boutique."
At first we weren't too excited; this appeared to be just another mobile retail space for specialty products. An energetic salesman named Glenn Wagner offered tastes and some information about olive oil's health benefits -- all good. Who doesn't love a fruity olive oil sample?
Then we heard Chris Bianco's name. What? Turns out, this olive oil is the same used by the legendary Bianco -- once only sold, in fact, to chefs. But the Italian family who creates the olive oil likes the cowboy life so much they relocated to the Valley, and went retail.
Sogno Toscano (which translates to Tuscan Dream) olive oil inspired a cookbook written by Lisa Dahl of Dahl & De Luca Italian restaurant in Sedona. Wagner tells us that they make Chris Bianco's private label olive oil and even created a fennel pollen olive oil for him -- it truly tastes like a bite of fennel dipped in fruity olive oil, minus the crunch. The ripe tomato olive oil was equally as impressive with bold fresh tomato flavor. That's the one we bought.
We also learned that Wagner had previously worked for A.J.s and says this kiosk venture that opened December 1st -- the first public retail operation for the company -- has become the number one kiosk at Fashion Square and resulted in an invitation to open a permanent location.
He told us that Sogno Toscano already has plans for expansion and will be presenting at the Scottsdale Culinary Festival in April. The company also makes an olive oil facial moisturizer backed by Sofia Loren herself. The kiosk is olive oil heaven. It's down the leg of the mall toward Neiman Marcus on the 2nd floor.
