Casa Oliver opens shop in Pacific Place for holidays

Colleague Kaitlin Strohschein filed this report.

This holiday season, Casa Oliver customers can see and taste the company's imported Spanish food before they buy it for the first time since the store opened.

The Seattle-based Casa Oliver started on the Web five years ago, and this year it will also sell food from a kiosk on the third floor of the downtown Pacific Place mall until Dec. 31.

The kiosk offers specialty Spanish food packages for the holidays which range in price from $18 to $159.

Unpackaged individual items are also available. Sardines in olive oil, the least expensive individual item coasts $3.50, and the most expensive is a large ham for $199.

Samples of the imported Spanish food, which includes meats, cheeses, olive oils, chocolates, spices and sauces, are available in front of the kiosk.

Rosaura Fabra-Jaques, who runs Casa Oliver said that she hopes that the kiosk will make it easer to develop good customer-relations than the online format.

By heading toward a more "brick-and-mortar" type of store, Casa Oliver will look more like food-importing stores that have been in Fabra-Jaques's family for three generations.

"My grandfather, Josep Jaques, started importing food before the Civil War in Spain in my little village of Puigcerda near the French border," said Fabra-Jaques with a noticeable European accent. "My childhood was surrounded by amazing food.

"When I came to the states, I thought it may be a good idea to share this with my friends, and here I am."