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It was about 12 years ago when Debbie Baron received a holiday gift that would change the direction of her life.
“It was a bottle of olive oil,” she recalled. “I’d always loved olive oil, but when I tasted this stuff, I called up my friend who’d gifted it to me and asked him where he’d bought it. He told me he’d purchased the bottle at an olive oil store. I’d never heard of such a thing.”
Baron was so enamored by the flavor that an idea was planted in her brain — to open an olive oil specialty shop in her hometown of Monterey. She already owned a candy store in the 30,000-person city, famously the backdrop of many John Steinbeck novels, and decided a little more than six months after receiving her friend’s gift to open Monterey’s Tasty Olive Bar on the first floor of the InterContinental the Clement Monterey …