In her previous life as a high-tech human resources executive, Elizabeth Osterman-Brown liked hosting appetizer hours with gourmet treats for nibbling. “Every time I put together a charcuterie plate, it was easy to get great cheese and great cured meat and maybe a good cured olive,” she explains. “But there was always that limp pickled veg on the platter. Why not have a luxury pickled vegetable? Who said you can’t?”
When she left her corporate job after years of being the family’s breadwinner, Osterman-Brown, who splits her time between Santa Barbara and the Bay Area, decided to tackle that gap in the market by starting her own pickle company, which she branded as Last of Seven (LOS). “I just dove right in and asked a lot of questions,” the mother of two said of how she figured it out. “I really enjoyed being a student and was surprised and delighted at how welcoming people were.”
Taste was only one component, as her daughter — then taking an environmental studies class in high school, now at USC — was sharing lessons about regenerative agriculture and other sustainable concepts. So Osterman-Brown spent about a year developing recipes, investigating eco-friendly packaging, and building relationships with farmers as well as her co-packer, Bradley Bennett of Pacific Pickle Works.