This is an archived edition of our Field Report email newsletter. You can sign up at the bottom of the page!

Greetings from Fat Gold!

Here in the brief respite between harvest hustle and holiday madness, let’s go back in time to uncover the secret origin of Fat Gold’s bright logo. We’ll also share a roundup of gift offerings from other food makers who we know and admire.

First, a bit of business. Our gift sets are ready to go. We thought it might be helpful to show you how they arrive:

It’s a very tidy package which you could easily wrap up. Alternatively, if you ship one of these directly to your recipient, we’ll include a nice gift note.

Additionally: we found a little wiggle room for annual subscriptions. If you purchase one before December 10, the subscription will begin with our very next batch, which is the first taste of oil produced on our new mill. That shipment will arrive around December 15 or 16.

If you’re part of a business, planning a holiday gift for clients and friends, we’re happy to send gift sets on your behalf—just get in touch. We offer a 20% discount for orders of 12+ tins, so a corporate gift would quickly qualify. (That discount is available to all, and it’s applied automatically in the online shop—have at it!)

As always, the online shop: https://fat.gold/shop/

Annual subscriptions: https://fat.gold/subscribe/

One of the nicest compliments we receive is when someone asks, “Who did your branding?”—because the answer is, we did!

Rewind to 2016. Kathryn and I had just signed the lease to a three acre olive grove. We didn’t yet know exactly what we had gotten ourselves into, but we knew we needed a brand. We also knew we would go our own way—nothing too elegant, bucolic, or faux Italian. There would absolutely not be any olive branches on the label. Kathryn envisioned super bright colors that made you do a double take at the olive oil shelf.

“Fat Gold” was a new moniker; we’d just decided on the name after a round of wacky whiteboard sessions at our dining room table. I worked up a few logo drafts, but none were sufficiently unruly. I was still using nice fonts, keeping things symmetrical.

There was, at that time, a wonderful little restaurant down the street where we often sat over chile rellenos and schemed. It was connected to a small music venue, so, for decor, old mimeographed concert flyers were placed under glass at each table. You’d sip your beer and look down at announcements of punky little acts playing the East Bay decades ago.

Some of the lettering on the posters was made from cut-out paper; the shapes were bold, unpretentious, and appealingly wonky. One day, I hovered my camera and took a few snapshots. Later, at home, I traced the letters in Photoshop, rescaled and rearranged them, spelling out F-A-T G-O… I didn’t have every letter I needed, so I drew a couple of new ones to fit.

That was seven years ago, before Fat Gold was anything but an idea. We still LOVE our logo. Somehow, we already knew what kind of company we wanted to be: bold, unpretentious… and appealingly wonky.

That’s all to say, there’s a bit of history hiding in those letters, and more than a bit of luck. We’ll take it!

If you’re looking for gifts in addition to Fat Gold, here are some offerings from our friends and fellow travelers:

• INNA Jam makes the best jam in the country, along with a lineup of other goodies: shrub, salt-preserved Meyer lemon, and more. Don’t miss their cute gift sets which are totally customizable.

• Boonville Barn Collective works magic with chiles. Their rich, tomatoey Piment d’Ville is a staple here at Fat Gold HQ—we put it on everything. And their whole dried chiles are fresher and tastier than any you can find at the store.

• Daybreak Seaweed Co. has taken something simple and made it profound. Their seaweed salt is a straightforward upgrade to basic salt: just a bit more savory, just a bit more healthy. Their new ume shisho furikake is a fruity delight.

• Enzo’s Table is a cornucopia. We think their biscotti is the best in the biz, while their Fresno Chili Crush olive oil—made not by infusion, like most flavored oils, but by actually throwing fresh chiles into the crusher along with the olives—is one of the world’s most versatile condiments. There’s tons to discover on these virtual shelves—take a few minutes to explore.

• Mill Valley Pasta Co.’s noodles are air-dried, nice and slow, without any fans or blowers. We didn’t previously know this was a variable in pasta production, to say nothing of an important one; it is! The snap of these noodles is something special. We love the porcini radioatore in particular.

• Proxy Coffee is the fuel that keeps Fat Gold running! Patrick Martin is roasting the best beans for a hundred miles around. We love his Omen blend; while labeled a “dark roast,” it’s balanced and satisfying—to us, more like a “perfect roast.”

That concludes this Field Report. This week, we begin packing and shipping our December batch for annual subscribers. Wait until you taste this oil!

–Robin, Kathryn, and Bryan