In a category where the bottle has not meaningfully changed since the 1980s, Graza put its extra virgin in a green plastic squeeze tube and asked home cooks to keep it next to the stove instead of in a dark cabinet. That single packaging decision, paired with single-origin Picual olives from Jaén, Spain [New Hope Network], is the entire wedge. It is also, by the company's own telling, the reason a brand founded in October 2020 [CNBC, Jun 2024] is now stocked at Target, Costco and Walmart [Inside Retail, 2025].
Co-founder Andrew Benin traces the idea to a December 2019 trip to his now-wife's native Spain, where he tasted an olive oil that, in his words, was "truly sensory" [CNBC, Jun 2024]. He had done short stints at Oura and Magic Spoon before launching Graza with Allen Dushi [CNBC, Jun 2024]. The product line splits olive oil by use case: Drizzle for finishing, Sizzle for everyday cooking [Klaviyo], and Frizzle for high heat [LinkedIn]. Refills come in 100% recyclable cans [Graza.co], which is both an environmental claim and, more importantly for unit economics, a way to ship olive oil without the weight penalty of glass.
The bet
Graza is selling convenience and frequency, not scarcity. The traditional premium olive oil playbook is a dark glass bottle, a story about a single estate, and a $32 price tag that guarantees the bottle gets used twice and forgotten. Graza inverts that: keep the single-origin sourcing, drop the reverence, and design a package that begs to be used daily. The brand reportedly broke $500,000 in revenue inside its first six months [Klaviyo] and did roughly $5 million in sales in year one [TheVenture/TikTok]. By the end of 2024, the company expected over $48 million in gross sales [Taste Radio, 2024].
First 6 months revenue | 0.5 | $M
Year 1 sales | 5 | $M
2024 expected gross sales | 48 | $M
Those are company-disclosed figures, and they describe a curve that very few DTC food brands hit without burning capital. Graza has raised roughly $1.1 million in seed funding [Crunchbase, Jun 2022], which, if accurate alongside the revenue trajectory, implies a capital efficiency that most venture-backed CPG founders would envy. Headcount sits around 40 [Inc.com], and the company is currently hiring a Senior Graphic Designer & Illustrator in Brooklyn [Workable], a tell that the brand voice remains a core competency rather than something outsourced.
Why it could be big
The global olive oil market is large, fragmented, and structurally inflationary. Drought in Spain has pushed wholesale prices to multi-year highs, which paradoxically helps a premium brand that has already conditioned customers to a higher price point. Graza's defensibility is not the oil itself, which any competent importer can source. It is the shelf presence of the green bottle and the frequency of repurchase that the squeeze format encourages. Once a household is squeezing oil onto eggs three mornings a week, the replacement cycle compresses from months to weeks.
The company is also testing whether the brand stretches. Graza Mayo launched in three SKUs (Original, Fancy, Garlic Aioli) at Whole Foods, Central Market, Kroger, Publix and Sprouts [Perishable News]. A Pinot Meunier called Nice Wine arrived through a partnership with Limited Addition Wines and MYSA Natural Wine [Good Housekeeping]. Wine and mayo are very different supply chains from olive oil, and the willingness to try both this early suggests the founders see Graza as a pantry brand, not a single-product company.
Team and traction
Benin and Dushi have been unusually public operators, appearing on podcasts including The Cashmere Fund and Good Money with Derrick Kinney to walk through the brand-building decisions in detail. The email list reached at least 35,544 subscribers by January 2023, a number disclosed only because Benin sent an apology email to all of them and Business Insider wrote it up as a case study in CEO communications [Business Insider, Jan 2023]. That is the kind of inadvertent metric leak that, in this case, also doubles as evidence the customer base is real and engaged.
Back of envelope on the unit economics: at roughly $48 million in gross sales [Taste Radio, 2024] across approximately 40 employees [Inc.com], revenue per employee lands near $1.2 million. For context, mature consumer brands typically run $300,000 to $600,000 per head. A young brand clearing seven figures per employee is either under-hiring relative to growth (likely) or running a very lean contract-manufactured supply chain (also likely). Both are signs of operational discipline rather than growth-at-any-cost.
The honest counterfactual
The bear case is straightforward: olive oil is a commodity wearing a costume, and once California Olive Ranch, Brightland, and the private-label teams at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's all ship squeeze bottles, Graza's packaging moat evaporates. Retail shelf space is a knife fight, and the same Target and Costco placements that signal momentum [Inside Retail, 2025] also expose the brand to slotting fees, promotional pressure, and the slow margin compression that has humbled plenty of DTC darlings on their way into mass retail. The bull answer, supported by the disclosed revenue ramp [Taste Radio, 2024] and the Mayo and Nice Wine extensions [Perishable News; Good Housekeeping], is that Graza is racing to become a multi-SKU pantry brand before the packaging gets copied, which is the right race to be running.
What to watch
The next twelve months should answer two questions. First, does the Mayo line hit the kind of velocity in conventional grocery that justifies a third and fourth category extension. Second, does Graza raise a priced Series A on the strength of the 2024 revenue figure, or does it stay capital-light and let cash flow fund the retail expansion. Either path is defensible. The one to watch on the shelf is California Olive Ranch, the incumbent Graza most directly has to beat: same premium positioning, longer retail history, and a bottle that still looks like every other bottle.