Roi & Co

Roi & Co was born the way all good stories are born: among friends and around a table. It was August 2020 when Enrique León was sharing, as usual, a fine meal with Roi Lojo and other friends at Roi’s spectacular restaurant, Punta Cabalo, on A Illa de Arousa.

Roi decided to bring out some tinned seafood, specifically mussels in escabeche. And that is where it all began.

The initial idea, born during that after-dinner conversation, was to produce a very small batch of the finest mussels that had ever existed, almost exclusively for their own consumption. And, at first, that was where it remained.

So, a few weeks later, Roi arranged to meet Enrique to propose that they embark on this venture. The answer was yes, but with one condition: they would have to propose it to one of their best friends, Aitor Ocio.

And so they did. That very night, they told Aitor that there was a project they wanted him to join, without revealing anything more.

Over the following months, they prepared a business plan and product sample, and in December 2020, in the midst of the restrictions caused by COVID, they traveled to Bilbao to try to convince Aitor.

He set only one condition: that it be the best preserved seafood brand in the world. To achieve this, they needed someone who could capture, in the brand and product image, the disruptive values that would become the company’s backbone: excellence and truth.

Excellence, because they only cook and can the very best product available. And if it is not the best, they will not do it.

Roi & Co does not want to continue the tradition of canning and selling as Galician seafood what is not, or charging for pieces of a size that they are not in fact selling; hence the “series,” which deliver exactly what they promise.

A demanding process began: many hours of thinking, developing, undoing what had been done in order to do it better. And they realized they were missing a pillar: someone with a channel where they could test, offer, and showcase the excellence of the preserves they were making, and who also knew how to do it while staying very close to the customer. They were fortunate that David Lecanda, the driving mind behind the Pimiento Verde group and Gran Asador Lecanda, gastronomic icons of the world capital of gastronomy, Madrid, agreed to join them.

And so almost three years of hard work went by: long journeys, endless video calls, but steady progress toward the challenging goal of achieving what they had in mind. A goal that is nothing other than the starting point of the most exciting journey of their lives: to create the best Galician preserves in the world.

Because when you come together with your friends, when your friends are the best at what they do, and when every minute is as fun as it is fascinating, only incredible things can be born.

And that is how ROI&CO was born.

A fascinating story that makes it very easy for Made in Spain Gourmet to welcome them into our select group of Spanish producers. The products we carry in our gourmet store are truly fantastic.