Visiting a new place and wishing that you could live there is a dream many people experience at some point in their lives but few then carry on to make the dream reality. However, two very special people called Claudia and Diego did just that after visiting the beautiful pueblo blanco of Vejer de la Frontera.

The pretty geranium decked houses, cobbled streets and wide range of excellent restaurants and bars, was more than they could pass on, so they did return not only to live there but to have a very successful business and bring up their little daughter Lola Maria. It has been my pleasure to know this
charming, inventive and hard working pair for some time and their story reads like a script for a pretty good romcom.

Claudia and Diego met in the year 2006 when Claudia was a sales manager and Diego a marketing manager. They were both working in the same multinational food and beverage company and fell in love between meetings and coffee breaks. They are originally from Milan and Livorno, two very diverse cities. The first a stylish cosmopolitan city, the capital of the Lombardy region and renowned for high fashion and the second, a bustling port city, founded in 1017, as the legends says by pirates and whores. It is Amedeo Modigliani’s homeland, and now is well known for its traditional drink “Ponce Livornese”.

While visiting Cadaques in the Girona region in 2007 for an unstructured holiday where they could go where they wanted and do what they wanted,
they got speaking to a girl in a hotel and she suggested that if they liked open spaces and nature, Caños de Meca and Vejer de la Frontera would be good places to visit. Some 1300km away, at the opposite end of Spain, it was not exactly a day trip but as Claudia told me “we said, let´s go! When we arrived in the Costa de la Luz, we loved it, a beautiful piece of coastline, full of nature, sun, blue sky and open warm people. That was it for us, every time we had some time off work, we came to the Costa de la Luz. Then in 2009 we decided to buy a wonderful attic in the centre of the historic town of Vejer to give us a base. You can view their lovely apartment which is now available for holiday letting at click here http://www.cadizcasa.com

A year later in 2010 when Lola Maria was born and we realised how little time we had to spend with her due to work commitments and the busy life we were leading, we thought about the wonderful free life we had experienced in Spain and we started making plans. “In 2012, we packed up our little green car, gave notice at our jobs, said goodbye to our family and headed to Vejer to start a new life.”

As with many people who make that decision to relocate, the initial period of enjoying your new country is gradually overtaken by the reality that
you can get too much of a good thing, you need to eat and the electricity bill still drops through the door and has to be paid.

Claudia says “while walking on the beach, we were asking ourselves, what can we do that will give us a living”? The answers came pretty quickly – it had to be marketing and commercial skills based, something in the food and beverage sector and something where we can work directly with our clients and introduce them to something new and exciting”.

So, Claudia and Diego decided to sell Andalucian gourmet products.

yaentucasa_calle correderaIn order to find the type of products they wanted to offer the public, they went on a trip to producers and wineries to sample the products personally and check out the quality. Having put together their core products they looked for a retail outlet and found a little place in the Calle Corredera, one of the most historic streets in Vejer. There was a fair amount of reforming to do but finally the premises were ready. They specialise in products from small to medium companies and sell them physically in their shop, via internet and direct by international distribution. Customers can buy and take away their selected products or they can be shipped to order. The new on line shop is up and running and some excellent contacts have helped this fabulous little enterprise spread into Germany, Italy and France where other food outlets now retail their products.

What did Claudia and Diego call this popular business – Ya en tu casa – el sabor de Andalucia. Diego says, “it means – ´and at home´, because we
bring these fabulous Andalucian products right in to your home and on to your table. We ship direct to the houses of our clients from the shop and from the on line store. We want people to feel that they are at home when they enter our shop whether that is physically or on line.

From the moment the shop opened in March 2013 business was brisk with excellent interest from abroad. The first shipped orders being to Switzerland and American. The client base now covers 72 nationalities from Moroccan to New Caledonian.

In September of the same year Claudia was voted business woman of the month by Andalucia Emprende of the Junta de Andalucia and in December their first shipment left for Sidney in Australia. Ya en tu Casa was involved in 4 events to get their name known and their products in front of the consumers. These events included two tastings for sherry and brandy, a fashion event in their shop and a Christmas market in the winery of an important hotel in Jerez.

It might seem a bit of a silly question but nonetheless I asked if they liked food and wine. Claudia tells me that Diego started young making undrinkable cocktails for his school friends and was always interested in international foods while Claudia is something of an expert on wines and her native Tuscany kitchen.

WSD_YAENTUCASAThe couple feel that Spain offers some excellent products such as the first ecological caviar in the world, the excellent almadraba tuna fish caught off the coast of the Costa de la Luz and a sweet, Muscat wine from the boutique winery group Jorge Ordoñez, called No. 2 Victoria, which was served to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at the Nobel Prize dinner in 2012. Not only are these high quality products unbeatable but their pricing is very favourable too. Ya en tu casa´s products currently most popular with their clients are an ecological and organic extra virgin olive oil, a red wine from Cadiz which is similar to an Italian “amarone” wine, a range of special chutneys including the fabulous sounding Chestnut and Rockfort, Tomato and Jalapeño and Onion and Pedro Ximenez plus a wonderful ecological honey.

You always know when you ask people like Claudia and Diego what their plans for the future are, that they will have a plan and it will be something pretty spectacular so within the next few weeks they will open a new “e-store” in the new part of Vejer at La Noria, where all the orders will be collated, packed and distributed and there is a little area where clients can come in and see the products then order via the on-line Ya en tu casa page through the monitor provided inside the shop. Eat your heart out Argos!

Also on the agenda for this year is a Ya en tu casa electronic magazine where chefs, writers, designers etc can comment freely about their Ya en tu casa
experience, Andalucia, recipes, places to visit, products and events. The idea is to put together producers and customers so they can exchange ideas
and experiences.

Not satisfied with this considerable expansion of their business, they are planning a third Ya en tu casa shop. As yet, premises have not been found but for a couple with their skills, that is merely a formality.

Drop in and visit Claudia and Diego at Ya en tu casa in Vejer in:
The Old Town: Calle Corredera, 17
The New Town: Calle Hijuela de Lucas, s/n
Website: www.yaentucasa.com
Phone: +34 681243933
Email: andalucia@yaentucasa.com
Facebook: yaentucasa.andalucia