it seems like inspiration only hits me at the grocery store. i’m not sure if we need to unpack that now, but today i wanted to talk about something near and dear to my heart: olive oil. olive oil, sea salt, and some vanilla gelato tickles my brain like nothing else. so with that, let’s talk olive oil.
graza: on building a brand
behind the branding success of many trendy consumer products is gander, a design shop in brooklyn. gander is also behind banza, magical spoon, and gotham greens (the lettuce in stores) to name a few. i’d argue that if any olive oil company rebranded to a squeeze bottle with a fun graphic and marketed it on tiktok, they too would see great success. inherently, olive oil is an incredible easy product to market visually, and i don’t believe it has been marketed and packaged well before graza.
their branding for lack of a better word, is genius.
packaging and form-factor
in terms of packaging, graza takes a lot of the heat (no pun intended) for their plastic bottle packaging. olive oil is traditionally stored in glass. glass is often the best material for storing olive oil because it's non-reactive and doesn't interact with the oil. glass also protects olive oil from UV exposure, which can cause rancidity. a study by the University of Piedmonte found that green UVAG glass preserves olive oil better than plastic containers. while i personally find a plastic bottle more intuitive to use olive oil, i do wonder if they have made a mistake with this. especially if they plan to expand into europe and abroad, would someone really use a plastic bottle of olive oil there when the norm is a glass? just food for thought…
product - is it actually a better product?
the founder, andrew benin, states that “most olive oil in the U.S. is blended from old, low quality oils. but across the ocean, people are using fresh, never-blended olive oil by the gallon. graza is that olive oil. we're made from 100% picual olives from jaen, spain, the region where over half the world’s olive oil is produced.” graza is trying to differentiate itself from the rest of olive oil in the grocery store with a claim to a quality product, but is it really much better than other olive oils in store? after trying it out myself, i would say for the price of 37 dollars for both “sizzle and drizzle” - yes, it is a better product, but only because of the price of the olive oils you could get in comparison.
graza is projected to do 48 million by the end of 2024.
what matters most at the end of the day is their profitability. all marketing and packaging aside - how is graza really doing? graza just announced they are projected to do ~48 million dollars in olive oil sales by the end of 2024. for perspective, graza did a mere 4.4 million in 2022. that seems like astronomical growth, but the profit margin for selling olive oil can range from 10–30% depending on several factors - especially the quality of the oil. not to mention, olive oil is an incredibly oversaturated market with hundreds of alternatives.
the question i beg is: can graza sustain their growth with their packaging and branding being largely responsible for their success so far?
i say: they can sustain this growth. i personally think graza is the epitome of why form-factor and branding are so incredibly important.
perhaps, we should be taking brands like graza, seriously:
“the way a company brands itself is everything–it will ultimately decide whether a business survives.” — sir richard branson.
let me know what you think, and if you haven’t tried graza... do it. see y’all next time i go to whole foods, i guess?
📚 what i have been reading lately, linked here for you:
https://www.graza.co/products/sizzle-drizzle-combo-pack?variant=42066782716118
https://www.takeagander.com/
https://www.businessinsider.com/graza-olive-oil-cofounder-high-prices-inflation-2024-2