MEET OUR TEAM
Christina Olivarez - Corporate Executive Chef
AN INTERVIEW WITH
Christina Olivarez
Where are you from and where do you live now?
I grew up in San Jose, California and while I recently relocated to Belmont, North Carolina to coincide with the opening of GNT’s North Carolina Customer Experience Center.
What are you most looking forward to about your recent move to North Carolina?
There are so many things that excite me about it! I’m really looking forward to exploring a new area of the country, to learn about the agricultural practices in that area, and to immerse myself in the food culture and culinary traditions of that region of the country. It’s such an interesting part of the United States and I can’t wait to embark upon all of the culinary adventures I know await me and my family.
What excites you most about the new North Carolina Customer Experience Center?
There are going to be so many opportunities to engage with our customers and to really partner with them on their projects in new and innovative ways. Our Culinary Innovation Kitchen is really state-of-the-art and we’re going to be able to offer our customers groundbreaking experiences. We’ll be able to engage with them on their projects in a really multifaceted and immersive way. I’m really looking forward to all of the workshop capabilities we’ll have too. It’s really groundbreaking and I can’t wait to connect with our customers in such an engaging way and to really show them first-hand what GNT is capable of.
Can you talk a bit more about the workshop capabilities of the Customer Experience Center?
Our plan is to offer a wide variety of workshops. They could be related to a specific project that a customer is working on or it could be broader and have more of an educational component to it so they better understand how to work with colors in general. We’ll offer workshops from our technical team too and we’ll do some in conjunction with one another. We’ll also host explanation lunches with themes based upon what the customer is working on or highlighting a specific ingredient or color. We’ll also offer workshops where our culinary and technical teams help a customer build a gold standard process from the beginning to the end of the commercialization process. The possibilities are endless and it’s going to be a lot of fun!
What first sparked your interest in the culinary industry?
It was there from the very beginning! While most kids watched cartoons on the weekend, I was always watching cooking shows. I couldn’t get enough of icons like Julia Child and Jacques Pépin. They were my heroes when I was a kid and I learned so much from them and so that seed was planted from a very young age. I vividly remember watching Jacques Pépin show the audience how to make a French omelet and I thought, “I’m going to make one too!” I carefully wrote down all of his instructions, went into the kitchen and made myself an omelet right then and there.
My mom was also encouraging of my culinary interests. She always rolls her eyes when I tell this story but I really wanted an Easy-Bake Oven when I was young and she said, “Why would you cook with the heat of a lightbulb? If you’re careful, I’ll let you use the real oven.” And so I never got my Easy-Bake but once I started using the real oven, there was no going back after that! I was always in the kitchen with my mom and grandparents. My brother and I used to host fake cooking shows using our Lincoln Logs as food. I can’t really remember a time when I wasn’t passionate about food and cooking.
What was your culinary school experience like?
My interest in going to culinary school also started at a really young age. I was watching a Saturday morning program called Cooking Secrets of the CIA and I immediately knew what I wanted to do with my future. I couldn’t believe that you could go to school to learn how to cook. It was always in the back of my mind after that. For a while I thought I wanted to be a lawyer but when I didn’t get into my top choice for college (which I soon realized was actually a blessing in disguise), I went to community college to get the fundamentals out of the way but after I graduated I thought, “Ok, now I’m going to follow my dreams and do what I’m really passionate about.” I could have gone to culinary school where I grew up in California but that television show was always in the back of my mind and I moved to New York to attend the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park.
What did you do after you graduated from culinary school?
I moved out to Las Vegas after school and I worked at the MGM Grand where I started out as a cook’s helper. I then worked at Michael White’s restaurant Fiamma Trattoria & Bar. I worked my way up there through every station. I was the only woman working at the grill station for a while and then I was offered the opportunity to work as a sous chef at the restaurant group’s Mexican-themed restaurant Diego. I was eventually promoted to executive sous chef and then became the executive chef. I participated in the internal culinary competitions hosted by MGM and also participated on the Food Network show Chopped (editor’s note: she won)!
What was appealing to you about making the leap from restaurants to GNT and why do you think it’s important for a coloring foods company to have such an innovative culinary team?
Ultimately, I think what really makes GNT standout is how forward thinking it is as a company. They have such a strong vision and really place a priority on innovation and see the importance of having both technical as well as culinary expertise. They understand that it’s not simply an ingredient making up one of our colors but it’s the vision behind it. They prioritize investing in a culinary team that can help bring those visions to life and it’s really fulfilling to work at a company that invests in that kind of innovation.
Why is it important for a product developer to not think of color as an afterthought?
Putting color at the front and center of the product development process can really help a company succeed and stay ahead of their competition. When you think about cooking in a home kitchen, you’re cooking with your eyes first. Even before you taste anything, you’re first drawn to an ingredient or dish based upon how visually appealing it is. It’s the same with the color of a product. Consumers choose products based upon how they look first. Vibrantly colored items are always going to win out in the supermarket aisle and a manufacturer should prioritize a product’s color from the very beginning of the development process. It’s really going to help their product succeed. Just like in a restaurant or in your home kitchen, presentation is everything.
Are you noticing a growing interest from customers in natural colors as opposed to those that are artificial?
Absolutely. What we hear from our customers is that they’re prioritizing natural colors because it’s what their consumers want and it’s something that’s growing more and more important to modern shoppers who are savvier and more sophisticated than ever before about what’s in the products they’re buying. And our culinary and technical teams are always there partnering with customers to work out any issues that might arise throughout the product development process from beginning to end. It’s really gratifying work!
What are some of your favorite ingredients to work with?
That’s a very big question! This might sound like a simple answer but I really love working with carrots. It might seem like a humble ingredient but they’re really important to our work at GNT and they can pose a challenge for us in terms of thinking how to work with them in new and innovative ways. For example, we’ve turned carrots into al pastor, carrot tartar, hot sauce. Basically, anything you could think of, we’ve probably made it from carrots! It’s a really versatile ingredient and offers a fun challenge for our team.
And another big question: Do you have a favorite EXBERRY® color?
I really like our shade Brilliant Pink. It has a prime pH range and is this beautiful vibrant pink color. We’ve played around with it quite a bit. When it’s blended with blue shades it becomes a really pretty color that I like to call candy purple.
Do you have a favorite dish or cooking experience from childhood that evokes positive memories when you think of it?
I could go on for an hour! I like to attribute a lot of my love for cooking to my great-grandmother who spent a lot of her life in New Mexico but was originally from Chihuahua, Mexico. I have so many memories of her cooking. One of my favorites was when our family would make tamales together for Christmas. We have pictures of those good times when we’d be up to our elbows in masa! My great-grandmother would also make tortillas for our entire family. She always had a freezer filled with them and after school she’d make us a snack by quickly throwing a tortilla on a really hot stove. One of the reasons I love to cook is because of her. Whenever I knew we were going to her house for dinner I would feel so excited.
And my grandmother on my mom’s side was Scandinavian and was also a really good cook. She was from the land of casseroles and so I have really fond memories of all of her casseroles. And she always had a cookie jar that was fully stocked. Every Christmas, she would walk in the house with a huge tray of her homemade cookies. There would be one tray for the meal and one tray she’d send home with us to freeze and enjoy later. She was basically the cookie supplier for everyone!
What lessons did you learn from those matriarchs?
I think ultimately, the most important thing I learned is the importance of creating an experience around food that brings everyone together, that makes people feel happy and comforts them. It’s the thing that can really connect us. During the pandemic, when everyone from GNT was working from home, our culinary team made cakes that we sent to our employees just to let them know that we were thinking about them. Food has an ability to connect us in a way that nothing else can; even when we were separated, food was a powerful reminder that we were all together too. There’s so much comfort that comes from remembering this.
What do you like to do in your free time?
We have a young son and so spending time with him is our main priority. He loves being in the kitchen too and one of his favorite things to eat is watermelon. If you give him watermelon on a summer day, it’s like it’s Christmas morning for him. There’s nothing better than seeing that happiness on his face. He has a little plastic silverware set and he’ll cut his own watermelon up in his little play kitchen and because his mom and dad work in kitchens (editor’s note: Christina is married to GNT’s other Corporate Executive Chef Armando Olivarez) when he’s in his little kitchen cutting up his watermelon, he tells us he’s working in his office. It’s the best.
What differentiates GNT from other coloring foods companies in the industry?
There are so many things but at the forefront it would have to be their commitment to natural, recognizable ingredients like fruit and vegetables and to adhering to simple processing techniques that don’t include chemical solvents. They work with so many companies throughout the industry but at the heart of it all are natural colors processed in a clean and transparent way. I am really intrigued by the way GNT is always thinking in such a forward thinking way.
