Putting Olive Oil in a Squeeze Bottle Earned This Startup a Cult Following

In the spring of 2023, a fight broke out on LinkedIn over olive oil. Or, to be more specific, olive oil bottles. Andrew Benin, the co-founder and chief executive officer of the olive oil startup Graza, was miffed that Brightland, a competitor, had packaged its new herb-infused Pizza Oil in a squeezable plastic bottle—Graza’s signature packaging—instead of the traditional glass. “#Copycat culture is an incessant part of our entrepreneurial landscape,” he posted. The spat spilled into food media, and a few days later, Benin returned to LinkedIn to apologize, saying he was “heated, and reacted poorly.” (Brightland, for its part, never commented publicly.)

Still, Benin says, he was heated for a reason. “It was a wake-up call for us,” he tells me now. Graza had introduced its two olive oils—Sizzle, for cooking with heat, and Drizzle, for dipping and, well, drizzling—less than two years earlier, and so far had enjoyed explosive success. Even well-funded packaged food startups owned by famous chefs tend to have a hard time getting onto shelves at the US’s biggest retailers. But a little more than a year after it hit the market, Graza was already in Whole Foods and preparing to expand its distribution to both Walmart and Target.