Hey, starter! Read on for…

—Danny (tell me your biz dreams: [email protected])

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1. Fill ‘er up. The idea for Maggie’s came from a bad cup of coffee. Alex Canter, who grew up washing pans at his family’s Canter’s Deli, an LA institution since 1931, stopped at a gas station one day and found a stale pot and sugary bottled drinks. In Japan and Italy he’d seen petrol stops people actually looked forward to visiting. So where were the American ones? Every station gets hundreds of visits a day (built-in foot traffic retail founders would kill for), but almost nobody stateside had rethought the experience.

Coming in 2027 is Alex’s contribution to the genre, what he calls “the first nice gas station.” It’s opening at an iconic midcentury Union 76 in Beverly Hills. Expect soft serve, draft lattes, pastries from a local bakery, and snacks from around the world. And Maggie? That’s his bulldog. ⛽ 🐶

2. Turn left. Meanwhile, in Gifu, Japan, shopkeeper Aya runs Hidari, an adorable store that only sells left-handed tools. Pop in for knives, scissors, and planners from small makers – plus a convo about the opportunities and limitations of the left-handed niche. You’re cutting out righties, but Google tells me 5.8 million people in Japan are left handed. What happens if they all discover Hidari? 💰✂

3. Stay for the tea. Over in Paris, Egyptian photographer Mariam El Gendy and biz partner Youssef El Sayed are working on Jihan, a concept shop in the Marais selling African and West Asian design. Beyond the retail are film screenings, listening sessions, a reading room and tea, via their cultural sub-brand Worldly Matters. Their concept is a travelling, city-to-city model (London’s up next…). Also, 5% of profits fund training for women artisans in Egypt, which is cool. → Read an interview with them here. 🇫🇷

4. All in the details. Look at the adorable shop aprons used by the team at Bangkok store BOYIS. 😍

5. A clean sweep. Chef Angel Dimayuga has added a cool skill beyond the kitchen: broom-making. These are gorgeous. 🧹

6. City life. And the latest world’s most liveable cities rankings just dropped (the Economist one, not Monocle). Is Copenhagen bored yet of being so liveable? 🤷‍♂

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In 2013, brothers Will and Harry Rolph went on holiday to a tiny village in Crete. Little did they know, the trip would lead to a marriage, 200 olive trees, and an entirely new chapter of life.

In Zakros, Harry fell in love with Eleni, a third-generation olive farmer. They got married and he stayed for good. Will, then a design student, kept coming back to work the two acres he and Harry soon bought, until he chose the olives over InDesign.

Two Fields, the starters’ small-batch, regenerative olive oil brand, grew out of that passion, alongside a collective that helps local families convert their groves to organic. Today their two-man operation supplies oil to the best kitchens in London.

→ For Starters met Will at London spot Ozone, a customer, to hear how Two Fields got into the hands of top chefs. (And why selling the biz isn’t on the table…) 🫒🫒🫒

💬 Hey Will, how did you and your brother end up becoming olive farmers in Crete?

Back in 2013, Harry and I went on holiday to a tiny village in eastern Crete, called Zakros. The area is full of olive groves, craft, and land passed down through families. And at the only taverna in the village, Harry met and fell in love with Eleni, the waitress there, whose family have been olive farmers for generations. He soon moved there to be with her.

💬 Wow, what a plot twist. I love this for them.

He’d just finished university, so he started working in restaurants and olive fields to pay his way. I was still at uni, studying design – I did my placement at Adidas in Germany. But I spent three summers in Greece with Harry in Zakros. We just both fell in love with everything about farming and olive oil. Between my design career and farming, I had to choose which way to go…

💬 When you started farming, were you two plotting ways to build an olive oil business?

No, not really.

💬 So when did Two Fields emerge?

When we were confronted with conventional farming for the first time, we saw farmers being squeezed, pushed down on price, chemicals being sprayed; this anonymous commodity market. We thought, there’s something really beautiful here, there’s generational craft, and it’s in a system that just doesn’t care about it. So we saved up and bought two acres – literally 200 trees, more like an orchard – and became apprentices to local farmers, particularly my brother’s father-in-law. But our goal was just to farm. Two Fields is a farming project.

💬 You didn’t know where it would lead, just that you wanted to work the land.

Yeah, we went really deep into soil health, microbes, and holistic farming. It’s what we now call regenerative farming, but we were doing it 10 years ago. When that practice got more visibility recently, we were like, “Oh, we’ve been doing that for years!” You can get pretty niche – there’s a natural farming process where you go to untouched soils and collect microbes and then basically turn that into a spray and spray it on your field. It brings life from healthy soils into degraded soils to kickstart them. It’s almost like a sourdough starter. All of this sent us down a path.

💬 Eventually you started selling your oil. How did Two Fields become a community collective?

We were going to summer food festivals and selling out every year. We were also selling out online. After sadly losing my brother’s father-in-law, we asked ourselves: What are the next steps? We didn’t want to buy more fields. We didn’t think that was the answer to the food system’s problems. So we started a collective. We now work with local farming families in Crete – our friends, neighbours and some family – to convert to organic. We support existing organic farmers and then we build regenerative practices on top.

💬 Very cool – but also a layer of operational complexity you didn’t previously have.

For the first few years of our journey, we said we weren’t going to work with anyone else, that we’d never buy anyone else’s oil. And then we ended up selling out of our bottles six months early. So we decided to work with one of the original organic farmers in the village, and sell it. We told his story and created a special illustration for the bottle, making sure he got a good money for his delicious oil. I was like, “This is awesome, we should do more of this!” That project opened our eyes. It was so rewarding – even more rewarding than just doing our own thing.

We’ve now built a completely direct supply chain and control every part of the process. That enables us to drive farming change on the ground, but it also makes sure that those families get fair, secure livelihoods for what they do. It’s about removing ourselves from the conventional system.

💬 You directly supply olive oil to London’s top restaurants. How does that work?

We partner with the best restaurants in London. We find out what the chefs need in the year and then we’ll guarantee them supply. Once everything is allotted, new restaurants or chefs can’t come on board until another farmer comes on board, or the yields are bigger. But once you’re in, you’re in – we’ll always have oil for you. A lot of what I’m doing is always calculating and making sure that we have supply.

💬 How did you develop such close relationships with those chefs?

I spent a couple of years cold emailing and cold-calling. The first place we worked with in London was Jolene. I called and emailed them so many times before we eventually got through to the right person. When we met, they gave me a tour of the bakery, then we sat down for lunch and an olive oil tasting. They were the first people to agree to the community project. They put an order in before the harvest to help us out, and then I actually had to phone them again because we ran out of money. I asked if they’d pay for it upfront and they agreed to that as well.

💬 That’s pretty amazing. A testament to either your skills of persuasion, storytelling, or the quality of the product.

We’re producers, we’re in the fields, and we’re building a collaborative network for other producers. I saw they were working with a company called Wildfarmed which makes regenerative flour, and so I thought, if they like regenerative flour, they might like regenerative olive oil.

Eventually we started to work with Skye Gyngell, who sadly passed away last year. Skye was the founder of Spring Restaurant in London and culinary director at Heckfield Place in Hampshire. She’d won a Michelin star at Petersham Nurseries Café and she was a serious advocate for producers. I managed to get a meeting with her, and for the first time in her career she switched from using Italian olive oil to 100% using Two Fields. She became very publicly supportive of us, which made other conversations easier. 

Ultimately, we’re selling a food product to great chefs, so everything we do only matters if the quality is good.

💬 It’s almost harder to sell to chefs, in that respect. I imagine chefs are also really interested in learning about the making process.

We’re heads-down running our own farm and a full supply chain, and chefs work incredibly hard, gruelling hours, so they look at what we’re doing and they’re like, respect. I know every chef we work with – some of them actually come out and help with the harvest. I think there’s something to that. We rely on people caring about the product quality, but we also rely on people caring about the craft of the process, the spirit of making. Lots of chefs want to support that.

In Greece, everyone knows everyone, or everyone has a cousin who knows someone, so you’re always being vetted by new farmers or families. Funnily enough, it’s similar in London’s chef world. They’re like, “Oh, Manteca uses you, that’s cool, let’s do it.” That kind of personal relationship and reputation matters hugely. A lot of our new business is from chefs recommending us to other chefs.

💬 What’s your day-to-day look like? How do you divide your time between Crete and London, farming and selling?

My brother’s in Crete full time. I spend the harvest out there for two or three months in the winter, and then I’m back out there in the spring as well. In London I’m talking with chefs, doing tastings, sometimes I’m literally on my bike cycling oil around because there’s a delivery issue. It’s still just the two of us. There’s always something that needs doing!

💬 How do you approach growth? Is your mindset more about how to keep the lights on each month, or is it how to expand the business?

We made a few big calls early on. The first one is that we don’t want to take investment, because we always want to be the decision-makers. It allows you to say no to people, if needed. There’s great power in that. We had to borrow a bit of money from friends and family two years ago – it was during an olive oil crisis where prices doubled. Despite that we were able to guarantee prices and security for farmers. We took that on ourselves and a big chunk of that is paid back now.

Another decision we made was that we don’t want to be in supermarkets, because we don’t really believe in that food model. And lastly, we have no plans to sell or exit this company, because this is our life.

💬 I’ve always thought that if you become rich and decide to do exactly what you’re already doing, you’ve made some great life decisions.

Yup. We’re tending families’ fields that have been there for generations. So if we wanted to sell it, well… why? Why isn’t this thing working in a way that makes it sustainable for us? Speaking for myself, if we sold it I’d think, but that’s what I want to do! What am I going to do now? Buy some more fields and start again? That doesn’t mean it’s always easy. Farming can be brutal but being part of a project you believe in and trying to show that there are other ways of working and growing food – there’s a lot of hope there.

💬 So how can a business grow without getting too stuck in an endless growth mindset?

I think there are two paths when you start a business. And I have zero judgment on either path. There are businesses that are started with the plan of an exit. And that’s fine. But that inherently defines the decisions you make. 

The other path is more or less what we’re doing. I don’t want to run a big business. I don’t want to run a big team. I want to work with great chefs. And the specific way we’re set up as a business determines how we can grow. For us, growth isn’t about planting more olive trees, it’s about getting more families on board and converting them from conventional to organic regenerative.

💬 Looking ahead, what are some other business areas or products you’re thinking about?

We run a profitable business which means we can reinvest in our farmers. Two years ago we helped build a regenerative certification with our friend Costas. We piloted it, and we became the first in Greece to be certified under it. This year we have a cohort of farmers who will go on that certification. And because we’re profitable, we’ll cover their costs. Our business allows us to do cool stuff like that. 

I have to be careful because I can get carried away, but I often ask: What crazy things can we do, which might not make sense financially, but it’s where the magic is? For instance, I’m really interested in building a platform to tell stories about the fabric of small villages. But you need a sensible operational and financial system in place first. You can’t do the magical stuff before you have the essential stuff bolted down.

💬 Do you want to be connected with anybody in the For Starters community? Dream partnership? Shoot your shot.

My dream is to do enough interesting things that people just need to tell other people about them. That’s my barometer. So if there’s someone reading this with the same values as us, and we can make something creative together – craft, tactile, physical or small – then get in touch. Let’s do it! ☼

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Skill nostalgia 🪚 → “Is all the beekeeping, baking and leatherwork just escapist fantasy or the start of a radically human approach to work?”

Akiya (空き家) 🇯🇵 → Are Japan’s 9 million abandoned homes the hospitality opportunity of a lifetime, or a logistical nightmare?

Handheld fans 🥵 → It’s hot out there, but mini-fans are plastic waste. Who’s making a sustainable one?

Claude Fable 🤖 → It’s very good.

Adaptive outdoor gear 🎣 → Outdoor gear is made with able-bodied users in mind, but gear design is becoming more inclusive.

Sports sponsorships 🥋 → Brands should look beyond the big sports — there’s plenty of white space for collaborations in niche sports like fencing, judo, water polo or squash.

Acne patches ⭐️ → How they became fashion statements.

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Fear-setting — “Fear-setting has produced my biggest business and personal successes, as well as repeatedly helped me to avoid catastrophic mistakes.”

The 250-year-old company that survived by refusing to lay people off. Big Think

What collectibles crazes can tell us about an entire era. Dwell

What makes a great bookshop? The Culture Dump

“AI-powered” isn’t a position. First Round Review

What to do when someone copies your creativity. Creative Health

1/4 — Almost a quarter of young market traders in the UK have a master’s degree, PhD or medical doctorate. Wild.

90 years, visualised — Life is short, y’all. Don’t waste yours. Start the thing.

5,000 restaurant menus, from 1880 to 1920. Endless inspiration!

Gladstone’s Luxury Dry Goods Store

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1. Congrats to FS subscriber Tom Horne, who threw open the doors to his brand L’Estrange’s new shop in London last week.

2. And subscriber Jakob Flingelli writes the fantastic weekly newsletter From Europe with Love, featuring under-the-radar European brands and products. He’s also built an interactive map of the 530+ products and makers he’s featured over the past 2 years:

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