![\"Food](\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2-20180330_115017.jpg\")
<\/a>It’s hard to explain this company, you practically need to use Ancestry dot com to understand the hierarchy, but I’ll give it a shot.<\/p>\n—Food Club<\/a> is one of dozens of brands of a privately held Chicago company called Topco Associates LLC<\/a>.<\/p>\n –Topco is a co-op. That is, it is owned by its “members.”<\/p>\n –It’s membership is comprised of grocery store companies and grocery distributing companies co-ops, which in turn, are owned by their member grocery store chains.<\/p>\n Topco started in 1944 as a way of establishing a reliable pipeline of grocery goods to stores, after the shortages left by the war. They have since grown to have hundreds of brand names, all across the grocery segment, fresh and frozen foods, jars and boxes, baby stuff, healthy stuff, with a brands you are familiar with including\u00a0Food Club, Sure FIne, East, Buckley Farms, Papa Enzos, Cape Covelle. They also have a “Premium” line, a “health and wellness line” and a “Basics” line where the products mostly are labeled “Valu Time.”<\/p>\n Remember when “generics” first hit the grocery stores? White packaging, black block letters – “OAT CEREAL” and such.\u00a0 Today “generics” (store brands, really) make up a huge percent of a store’s inventory and are very often made by the largest manufacturers in the country, the ones that make the brand names you trust.\u00a0 ALDI stores is a master of this segment, having products made to their specifications by major processors, and putting a brand name label of their own on the product.\u00a0 I’ve reviewed a ton of Aldi products on this site<\/a>.<\/p>\n All these types of products are generally considerbly less money than the brand names, and are on the shelf right next to the majors so you can compare. Yeah, I don’t get why Oreos would want fake ones right next to them on the shelf, but it is what it is.<\/p>\n IN ANY CASE, today it’s about Food Club brands Spanish Olives with Diced Pimento and “Olive tree.” Now that last item is intriguing, you have to admit, it’s going to be the perfect coat rack companion to my pizza box “doll house tables.”<\/p>\n These are Manzanillo olives from Spain. Processors pick at different times in the season depending on the size they desire, these are early, the smallest.\u00a0 I’m an olive snob.\u00a0 I’m always eating them and once a year, I cure them myself at home, purchasing raw olives<\/a> and going through the painstaking and lengthy process to cure them naturally (in a brine).<\/p>\n Large olive producers can afford to wait around, so the natural bitterness of the fruit is removed from the olive with a lye bath. Yes, lye.<\/p>\n As far the Food Club product? Whatever process they’ve used has caused the fruit to be too soft.\u00a0 The brine is fine, and these would be ok to finely dice and use in whatever recipe you use diced olives in, but they aren’t fun to snack on.<\/p>\n The upside? They were only 99 cents.\u00a0 Probably less than half the price of competitive brands.<\/p>\n So there you have it. Yes, I did dice them.\u00a0 Put them on an Italian hoagie (sub, grinder, torpedo, hero, poorboy, poboy)\u00a0 where they worked just fine.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Food Club Brand Spanish Olives Review<\/p>\n Food Club Brand Spanish Olives Review<\/p>\n Topco Associates<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Food Club Brand Spanish Olives Review It’s hard to explain this company, you practically need to use Ancestry dot com to understand the hierarchy, but I’ll give it a shot. —Food Club is one of dozens of brands of a privately held Chicago company called Topco Associates LLC. –Topco is a co-op. That is, it… Continue reading Food Club Brand Spanish Olives Review<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,16,25],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17898"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}