Is Olive Oil of the World legit?
Olive Oil of the World is the opposite of an anonymous web storefront. Founder Ersilia Moreno, a former accountant, and her son Chef Rasheed Shihada have been selling oil in Florida since the late 2000s, first at farmers markets, now from a 2,000-square-foot store in North Palm Beach with a wine shop and cooking school attached. The domain dates to 2008. Local press covers them; the store holds a 5.0 Google rating across 91 reviews, full of named staff praise ("Chef Greg was WONDERFUL!!", "Chef Rasheed is incredibly knowledgeable and friendly"). As a place to buy well-chosen oil in person, the record is excellent.
The adoption program is a different product with a different transparency level. It is run with "the Trampolini family of Perugia," restoring 300-plus-year-old Umbrian trees abandoned for two decades. A one-time adoption costs $229.95; a subscription runs $199.95 every 12 months. Either way you receive four bottles, two liters total, pressed from your tree with personalized labels, delivered sometime between December 15 and March 15, shipping to the lower 48 US states only.
Three things in the fine print deserve more attention than the brochure gives them. First, the subscription requires a minimum of two years before cancellation is permitted, an unusual lock for a gift product. Second, at roughly $100 to $115 per liter, this is the most expensive oil per liter in our series apart from adoption-included extras. Third, and most striking: we could not find a single review of the tree program itself, anywhere. The 91 five-star Google reviews belong to the Florida store experience. The program’s customers, if they are as happy, are invisible. No organic certification is named for the program oil, and the three-month delivery window means you cannot know how fresh your bottles are when they arrive.
Our verdict: a real, warm, established family business whose adoption program asks for boutique money with less disclosure than its own tasting counter provides. If you are local, go in, taste, and ask Chef Rasheed the questions this series keeps asking: press date, certification, and what happens if you want out after year one. The store has earned trust; the program should show its work.