Valentin Humer, CEO and founder of Salute Santé! has always been quick with ideas and quick to act on them. When it became apparent that our very valuable customers – our fine restaurants – were in trouble due to mandated closures and the need to revamp their kitchens to provide safe working conditions for their cooks, he made the only decision he could: Salute Santé! would donate cases of grapeseed oil to ensure they’d still have their key ingredient, allowing them not only to offer take-out food to subsidize their employees, but to cook for our frontline responders and healthcare workers as well.
In order to do this however, Nanette & Valentin needed to figure out a way to shoulder their own costs, continue to pay their employees and keep them safe. Neither doubted for a moment that Salute Santé! would not stay stable and available to customers in this time of need. But how? True to form, Valentin quickly had a great and inspired plan: The wine industry here in Napa bottle their wines in traditional 750ml glass bottles, and sometimes they have leftover bottles, unused and sparkling new, after bottling. “Let’s use all those wonderful wine bottles to fill with our grapeseed oil!” Nanette readily agreed: “I think you’ve got it!!” Happily, the Napa wine community, resilient and connected in this time of crisis, also agreed.
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We are lucky and grateful to have acquired a good quantity of these traditional 750ml wine bottles at a cost that is not only a substantial savings for us, but one we gratefully pass on to you, our online customers, as we are all in this together.
Thanks to these up-cycled and unused glass bottles from the local wine industry, we are able to prepare and offer for purchase, bottles filled with 50% more of our delicious, top quality and heart healthy Salute Santé! grapeseed oil than our original glass bottle and we couldn’t be more delighted. The bottle design may change, but the wonderful grapeseed oil is what you know and love!
The concept of resilience and self-reliance is not new to us. It is an inherent characteristic of the business model of Salute Santé!, which has long aimed to create a closed-loop system: from utilizing existing bio material (grape seeds) from the wine industry to prevent the creation of waste, to finding ever new ways to close the loop. We continue that aim with these bottles, and with our “new” label as well.
Some of you long time fans may remember our very first packaging: our fancy long neck 500ml glass bottle with gold leaf details on the label. Well, the “new” label are also a utilization of what we had on hand; our leftover original labels! We‘ve simply added a sticker stating the bottles contain 50% more oil. Luckily, Salute Santé! oil has been 3rd party certified 100% Grapeseed Oil since day one with quality guaranteed for over 25 years, so no new information is needed on the label. There is of course fresh oil inside, with our 24 months shelf life guarantee.
The label is just a clever way for a hard working company to offer you, our cherished retail customers, the best deal possible while we help our restaurants keep our first responders fed. We are very proud to be a part of this cycle of support in the fight for good health.
We have long stressed the importance of healthy food and our words are even more important now: “During this time people need all the help they can get to stay healthy, and the food we eat is our biggest source of medicine. We hope that our grapeseed oil can help keep our neighbors, customers and first responders healthy and strong
Salute Santé!…to your health! More important words were never spoken.
Nanette and Valentin Humer, Purveyors of Salute Santé Grapeseed Oil