Meet Jake Redlener | CEO, Forager, and Full Time Food Nerd

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jake Redlener and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jake, what do you attribute your success to?
To me, it all comes down to making sure we provide a level of customer service that is leagues above and beyond any of our competitors. Every client is our most important client, and we do everything in our power to make sure all their needs are being met; be it bailing them out of a pinch if they need an emergency delivery, or making sure that every product they receive is exactly to their specifications. That said, if your product quality isn’t there, customer service will only take you so far. We go to great lengths to make sure everything we bring in meets our extremely high standards, and will absolutely send back anything that doesn’t. Our suppliers know this about us, so they are usually really great about only sending us the best of the best, as we refuse to bring anything less to our customers.
We really, truly care about the success and happiness of our clients, and they reciprocate their appreciation by working hard to get us on their menu wherever they can, recommending us to other chefs, and taking us with them when they move on to new restaurants/positions.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
What sets us apart is not just the quality, rarity, or scope of products we have access too, but also the customer service we provide to every one of our clients. When you order from us, your product is not just being dropped off in the back by some guy with a dolly; we bring it in ourselves, so we can shoot the shit with the chef, go through everything, answer any questions, and we usually bring some crazy samples for you to mess around with. If you call or text needing something, we answer, and we won’t give you the runaround. We are ALWAYS upfront about the product we have, and will never try to make a quick buck off of anyone. I’d rather lose money on a sale than have a customer think they’re being taken advantage of or neglected, because this business relies so heavily on relationships. So many restaurants are getting a vast majority of their product shipped in from all over the states, because outside of us, there’s no other local companies offering the products and services we do, and we’re working hard to change that. I got into this business through my obsession foraging mushrooms, which I started getting into around age 21/22. I eventually found out that there were people who would go door to door selling their mushrooms to restaurants, and I set off to try and do so myself. Then when I learned about specialty food distribution, people who went around slinging truffles and caviar to the best chefs in the world, I knew that I wanted to do that for a career. Outside of picking some mushrooms and working at some restaurants here and there, however, I didn’t have much of a culinary background. That made it really difficult to break into the industry (surprisingly, my degree in Biology and Anthropology didn’t help too much), as most of the people who worked in it were CIA grads or experienced chefs. I ended up getting a job with a super high end food distributor in NYC, but the process to do so was far from quick or easy. It took 3 rounds of job interviews, 2 rejections, and weekly followup emails for almost a year to finally get my shot. Before I started, the lowest/entry level job at the company was daily delivery driver, but the job I was given was a new position consisting of all the responsibilities the other employees hated most; Airport pickup/drop-offs, dragger/2nd run deliveries, Saturday shift, etc. It was absolutely brutal, 12-16 hour days, 5-6 days per week, but from day 1 I knew all I wanted in the world was to be a specialty foods sales rep, so I did everything I could to keep my head down and work towards getting there as quickly as possible. I spent all my free time and weekends researching restaurants and chefs, doing cold calls, and boning up on my product knowledge. After a few months, I finally got promoted to delivery driver, and shortly after that, to sales rep. From then on, my days consisted of sales meetings and product tastings, walking in through the back door of restaurants to try and drum up new business, and patronizing my clients restaurants. It was a dream. . .until Covid hit. A few months after the restaurant industry in NYC all but shut down, I took the opportunity to move out to Colorado, and started Olympia Rare Foods with my partner Will.
The most important lesson I’ve learned is that hard work, tenacity, and vision will get you where you want to go. I made so many mistakes when I first started, that I quickly learned how essential resilience is; you simply can’t let your nerves or a fear of failure stop you from going after what you want. Rejection happens, but it’s how you handle and bounce back from that rejection that truly defines you. You have to dust yourself off and keep looking forward. For something a little more industry specific, I learned that if you treat your clients right and move mountains for them, they’ll take you with them from restaurant to restaurant, year after year.
I want the world to know that if you have a dream or a vision, don’t let fear stop you from making it into reality. If I’d just taken the first no and went back to driving lyft, working at a barnes and nobles, and temping at a law office just to cover my rent, I wouldn’t be out here in this beautiful place building my dream company. The most important thing to do is surround yourself with people who support and believe in your vision, and push you forward. I absolutely could not have done this without the tremendous support I’ve received from everyone around me. And I know that everybody with me at Olympia shares the same passion and drive for this work as I do.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Hmmm, that’s an interesting question! I am lucky enough to work with the best restaurants in the Denver/Boulder area, so I would definitely take them to ball out at all of our clients spots! I won’t list them here in fear of leaving anyone out, but they know who they are. I’m always on a quest to find the best Vietnamese, Thai, Mexican and Dim Sum spots in Denver, so if they were up to do some food touring, we could definitely squeeze that in.
I live up in the mountains, and I love driving down 285 just to take in the views, go offroading, do little day hikes, etc., so we’d do a ton of that. There’s also a ton of fun little spots up here that we love, like Evergreen Brewery, Wildflower Cafe, and the Sit-N-Bull.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I’d love to give a shoutout to my partners, Will Mendelsohn, our CSO, and Gabi Walker, our CFO. Will and I started this company last year in the hopes of slinging some truffles and caviar here and there around Denver, mostly focusing on the holidays, and together, we’ve grown this into something so much bigger and greater than we even imagined. Without Gabi’s motivation, organization, and drive to move us forward, we’d never be where we’re at today. I am so grateful to both of them for staying by my side through all this, and for trusting and believing in my vision to turn this company into the success we know it can be.

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