Graza
Online retailer of single-origin extra virgin olive oil in squeeze bottles
Website: https://www.graza.co
Cover Block
PUBLIC
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Name | Graza |
| Tagline | Online retailer of single-origin extra virgin olive oil in squeeze bottles |
| Headquarters | Brooklyn, New York, United States |
| Founded | 2020 |
| Stage | Seed |
| Business Model | Direct-to-Consumer (DTC), with retail expansion |
| Industry | E-commerce / Consumer Packaged Goods |
| Technology Type | No technology component |
| Geography | North America |
| Growth Profile | Venture scale |
| Founding Team | Co-founders (2): Andrew Benin, Allen Dushi |
| Funding Label | Seed |
| Total Disclosed | ~$1.1M [Crunchbase, Jun 2022] |
Links
PUBLIC
- Website: https://graza.co
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/graza
- Crunchbase: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/graza
- Careers: https://apply.workable.com/graza/?lng=en
Executive Summary
PUBLIC
Graza is a Brooklyn-based consumer brand that sells single-origin extra virgin olive oil from Jaén, Spain in a squeeze bottle, and it has built a category-disrupting position in a corner of the grocery aisle that had seen little brand innovation in a generation. The company was founded in October 2020 by Andrew Benin, who previously held marketing roles at startups including Oura and Magic Spoon, after a 2019 trip to his now-wife's native Spain introduced him to producer-direct olive oil [CNBC, Jun 2024]. Co-founder Allen Dushi rounds out the founding team [Good Money with Derrick Kinney]. The product line centers on two everyday SKUs, Drizzle (finishing) and Sizzle (cooking), with a high-heat Frizzle variant and a recently launched Graza Mayo line extending the brand into adjacent categories [Klaviyo][Perishable News]. The company raised a seed round of approximately $1.1 million in 2022 and has since scaled distribution into Whole Foods, Target, Costco, Walmart, Kroger, Publix, and Sprouts [Crunchbase, Jun 2022][Inside Retail, 2025][Perishable News]. Reported gross sales were on track to exceed $48 million by the end of 2024, a figure attributed to the founder in trade press and which investors should verify directly given that it originates with the company [Taste Radio, 2024][LinkedIn]. Over the next 12 to 18 months the questions worth tracking are whether brand velocity holds as the shelf set widens, whether the Mayo and wine extensions earn repeat purchase at retail, and whether the capital structure remains lean enough that a small disclosed seed can sustain a multi-channel CPG operation.
Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Founding details, founders, product line, and retail footprint corroborated across CNBC, Crunchbase, New Hope Network, and Perishable News.
Taxonomy Snapshot
| Axis | Value |
|---|---|
| Stage | Seed |
| Business Model | DTC + wholesale retail |
| Industry / Vertical | CPG / Specialty Food |
| Geography | North America (HQ Brooklyn, NY) |
| Growth Profile | Venture scale |
| Founding Team | Co-founders (2) |
| Funding | Seed, ~$1.1M disclosed |
Company Overview
PUBLIC
Graza began with a meal. Andrew Benin has recounted in multiple interviews that a December 2019 trip to Spain, his wife's home country, introduced him to a quality of olive oil he had not previously encountered in the United States, and that the experience was the catalyst for the company [CNBC, Jun 2024]. He founded Graza in October 2020, alongside co-founder Allen Dushi, with the thesis that a single-varietal Picual oil from Jaén, packaged in a squeeze bottle and priced for everyday use, could create a new pricing and usage tier between the bulk grocery jug and the boutique tin [CNBC, Jun 2024][New Hope Network].
The company is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York. Early commercial traction was rapid: per a Klaviyo case study, Graza crossed $500,000 in revenue inside its first six months as a DTC brand, with viral social-media content (most notably a TikTok showing the Drizzle and Sizzle bottles posed as a couple) carrying a substantial share of the discovery load [Klaviyo]. The company raised a seed round of approximately $1.1 million in mid-2022 [Crunchbase, Jun 2022]. By January 2023, an apology email reported in Business Insider went to 35,544 subscribers, offering a contemporaneous data point on list size at that moment [Business Insider, Jan 2023].
Milestones since then have skewed toward distribution and line extension rather than fundraising. Graza has expanded onto shelves at Target, Costco, and Walmart [Inside Retail, 2025], and launched a Graza Mayo line (Original, Fancy, Garlic Aioli) into Whole Foods, Central Market, Kroger, Publix, and Sprouts [Perishable News]. The brand has also collaborated outside food: a "Nice Wine" Pinot Meunier was launched with Limited Addition Wines and MYSA Natural Wine [Good Housekeeping]. Headcount sits around 40 employees, per a figure cited by Inc. [Inc.com].
Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Founding date, HQ, founders, seed round, and retail expansion confirmed across CNBC, Crunchbase, Klaviyo, Inside Retail, and Perishable News.
Product and Technology
MIXED
Graza's product is the bottle as much as the oil. The flagship line is single-origin extra virgin olive oil pressed from Picual olives grown in Jaén, Spain, sold in two squeeze bottles whose labels and use cases are spelled out on the package itself: Drizzle, a greener, more polyphenol-forward finishing oil, and Sizzle, a milder oil intended for everyday cooking [PUBLIC] [New Hope Network][Klaviyo]. The format is the differentiator. By moving away from glass bottles and pour spouts, the brand reframed olive oil as a daily-use ingredient closer in feel to a condiment than a pantry investment, and that reframing has been central to the company's content marketing on TikTok and Instagram [PUBLIC] [Klaviyo].
The assortment has widened in two directions. Within olive oil, Graza added Frizzle, a high-heat cooking variant [PUBLIC] [LinkedIn], and a 100% recyclable refill can program intended to bring the per-use price down and reduce packaging waste [PUBLIC] [Graza.co]. Outside olive oil, the company launched a Graza Mayo line in three SKUs (Original, Fancy, Garlic Aioli) into national grocery [PUBLIC] [Perishable News] and partnered on a limited "Nice Wine" release with two natural-wine collaborators [PUBLIC] [Good Housekeeping]. Quality positioning has been validated externally: Graza Sizzle was named "Best All-Around" olive oil by The New York Times Wirecutter, per the company's own LinkedIn [MIXED, company-cited] [LinkedIn].
Graza is not a technology company in the venture sense. There is no proprietary platform, no software product, and no patent moat disclosed in any of the captured sources. The operating stack is a conventional DTC plus wholesale CPG setup: an e-commerce storefront, an email and SMS engine (Klaviyo is a confirmed vendor relationship given the published case study) [PUBLIC] [Klaviyo], and a retail distribution motion that has put the brand on shelves at Target, Costco, Walmart, Whole Foods, Kroger, Publix, and Sprouts [PUBLIC] [Inside Retail, 2025][Perishable News]. The defensibility argument therefore rests on brand, supply relationships in Jaén, and shelf placement, not on technology.
Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Product specifications and retail availability confirmed across New Hope Network, Klaviyo, Perishable News, Inside Retail, and Graza.co.
Market Research and Opportunity
PUBLIC
Olive oil is one of the few large grocery categories where premiumization has run faster than brand consolidation, which is the structural reason a Graza-style entrant can take share. The captured sources do not include a named third-party TAM study for the U.S. olive oil market, so the sizing here is built from cited brand-level claims rather than top-down analyst figures. What is clear from the source set is that a single new entrant has, in roughly four years, scaled to a reported $48 million in annual gross sales while operating on a disclosed seed round of approximately $1.1 million [Taste Radio, 2024][Crunchbase, Jun 2022]. That ratio of revenue to disclosed primary capital is the single most important market signal in the file: it implies category-level willingness to pay for a brand-led product in a shelf set that has historically competed on price and provenance claims rather than design.
The demand drivers cited in the research point in three directions. First, a shift in how consumers discover food brands: the Klaviyo case study credits short-form video, and specifically TikTok, with a meaningful share of Graza's first-six-month revenue, and the brand's email list had reached 35,544 subscribers by January 2023 [Klaviyo][Business Insider, Jan 2023]. Second, a willingness among grocery buyers to give shelf space to design-led specialty brands, evidenced by Graza's placement at Target, Costco, Walmart, Whole Foods, Kroger, Publix, and Sprouts [Inside Retail, 2025][Perishable News]. Third, a consumer appetite for single-origin, single-varietal sourcing claims that mirror what has already happened in coffee and chocolate, and which Graza leans on with its Picual-from-Jaén story [New Hope Network].
Adjacent and substitute markets matter for the upside case. Cooking oil writ large (seed oils, avocado oil, ghee) is the substitute set, and the Mayo launch puts Graza into condiments, a category dominated by a small number of legacy brands [Perishable News]. The "Nice Wine" collaboration suggests an interest in lifestyle adjacencies, though the captured evidence treats it as a limited release rather than a strategic pillar [Good Housekeeping]. Regulatory and macro forces worth flagging: olive oil pricing has been volatile through 2023 and 2024 due to drought conditions in Spain, which is the single largest input-cost variable for a Jaén-sourced brand. The captured sources do not quantify Graza's hedging or contracting strategy.
The table below collects the cited revenue and operating-scale claims with their sources and the confidence the underlying research engine assigned.
| Metric | Value | Source | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| First six-month revenue | >$500K | [Klaviyo] | ORANGE |
| Email list size (Jan 2023) | 35,544 | [Business Insider, Jan 2023] | YELLOW |
| Reported gross sales (2024 expected) | >$48M | [Taste Radio, 2024] | YELLOW |
| Headcount | ~40 employees | [Inc.com] | YELLOW |
Analyst takeaway: the table reads as a credible step-change story (sub-$1M to a reported $48M in roughly three years) with the important caveat that the largest revenue figure is founder-attributed in trade press rather than audited. Treat it as a directional ceiling, not a verified result.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Brand-level metrics are supported by named publications, but no third-party market sizing report is in the captured source set.
Competitive Landscape
MIXED
Graza's competitive position is not against the bulk grocery oils it sits next to; it is against a small set of design-led olive oil brands and a much larger set of legacy premium imports. The structured facts in this file do not include named competitors, so the analysis below is written as prose rather than a comparison table.
In the design-led specialty segment, the closest analogs are brands such as Brightland (California, glass bottles, gift-forward presentation) and Fat Gold (California, subscription-led, single-estate), neither of which appears in the captured Graza source set and so are referenced here only as category context rather than as cited claims. Against that segment, Graza's edge is twofold: a squeeze-bottle format that reframes the product as everyday rather than gift, and a price point that the company has positioned as accessible. Against the legacy import segment (California Olive Ranch, Partanna, Colavita, the supermarket private labels), the edge is brand recognition among younger, social-media-native cooks, plus shelf adjacency in retailers that have historically been hard to enter (Costco, Walmart) [Inside Retail, 2025].
Where the edge is most durable: distribution and brand. Securing placement at Target, Costco, Walmart, Whole Foods, Kroger, Publix, and Sprouts in roughly four years from founding is not easily replicated by a new entrant, because category-manager relationships and slotting economics compound [Inside Retail, 2025][Perishable News]. The single-origin Jaén supply relationship, repeatedly emphasized in interviews, is also a real input-side advantage in a year when Spanish olive oil supply has been constrained.
Where the company is most exposed: the bottle format is a design choice, not a patent, and a well-capitalized incumbent could match the SKU within a season. Mayo is a category where Hellmann's, Duke's, Kewpie, and private label have entrenched repeat-purchase loyalty, and the Graza Mayo launch into Whole Foods and Kroger is therefore a higher-risk extension than a flavor variant within olive oil [Perishable News]. The reported $48M revenue figure, if correct, also implies a level of working capital intensity (inventory across multiple chains, multiple SKUs, two product categories) that is difficult to sustain on a disclosed $1.1M seed without subsequent undisclosed financing [Taste Radio, 2024][Crunchbase, Jun 2022].
Most plausible 18-month scenario: Graza becomes the default specialty olive oil brand at mass grocery while the Mayo line earns slower, more conditional repeat. Winner if the brand can hold gross margin through Spanish-harvest volatility and convert Mayo trial into repeat. Loser if input costs compress unit economics at the same time a fast-follower (most likely a private-label squeeze bottle from a major grocery banner) compresses shelf price. The outcome is more about operational discipline than about category demand, which the cited evidence suggests is intact.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Competitive context is informed by industry knowledge; only Graza-specific distribution and product claims are sourced from the captured research.
Opportunity
PUBLIC
The size of the prize, if Graza executes, is the chance to become the first design-native, multi-SKU pantry brand built in the social-video era, with olive oil as the wedge.
The headline opportunity. The plausible best-case outcome is that Graza becomes the next-generation default brand for an entire pantry shelf, beginning with olive oil and extending into condiments and adjacent cooking ingredients. The cited evidence makes that outcome reachable rather than aspirational for three reasons. First, the brand has already crossed the hardest threshold in CPG, which is securing national placement in mass channels (Target, Costco, Walmart) within roughly four years of founding [Inside Retail, 2025]. Second, the reported revenue trajectory, from sub-$1M in year one to a reported $48M expected in 2024, is consistent with a brand that has product-market fit at scale rather than only in a DTC niche [Klaviyo][Taste Radio, 2024]. Third, the line extension into Mayo demonstrates that the category-management teams at Whole Foods, Kroger, Publix, and Sprouts are willing to underwrite a second category from the brand [Perishable News].
Growth scenarios.
| Scenario | What happens | Catalyst | Why it's plausible |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pantry platform | Graza extends from olive oil and mayo into a multi-SKU pantry brand (vinegars, salts, finishing sauces) carried across mass grocery | A successful Mayo repeat-purchase result that gives buyers confidence to slot a third category | Whole Foods, Kroger, Publix, and Sprouts have already accepted the second category [Perishable News] |
| Mass-grocery default | Graza becomes the default branded olive oil at Target, Costco, and Walmart, taking share from legacy imports | Continued shelf expansion plus a Wirecutter-style external validation cycle | Sizzle was named "Best All-Around" by NYT Wirecutter per the company [LinkedIn]; mass placement already confirmed [Inside Retail, 2025] |
| Strategic acquisition | A large CPG acquirer (the usual buyer set in specialty food) acquires Graza for brand and shelf access | A 2025-2026 inflection where revenue and distribution are both proven | Reported gross sales of >$48M [Taste Radio, 2024] put the brand inside the typical strategic-acquisition revenue band for specialty-food roll-ups |
What compounding looks like. The flywheel for Graza is brand-led shelf velocity. Strong sell-through on olive oil earns slotting for Mayo; strong sell-through on Mayo earns slotting for a third category; each category extension shares the same brand marketing spend, the same social-content engine, and the same retailer relationships, which lowers the marginal cost of every subsequent SKU. The Klaviyo case study and the 35,544-person email list point to a direct-to-consumer channel that can pre-seed demand before retail launches, which is a meaningful operating advantage versus brands that depend solely on retailer trial promotions [Klaviyo][Business Insider, Jan 2023]. The recyclable refill-can program, if it converts repeat customers, is an additional retention lever [Graza.co].
The size of the win. Specialty-food acquisitions in the United States have historically traded at mid-single-digit to low-double-digit multiples of revenue when brand strength and retail distribution are both present. If Graza's reported gross sales of approximately $48 million in 2024 are accurate, and if the trajectory continues into 2025-2026, the brand sits inside the band that has historically attracted strategic interest from the major CPG roll-ups [Taste Radio, 2024]. A scenario in which Graza becomes a multi-category pantry platform (rather than a single-SKU specialty brand) would push the comparable set toward larger condiment and cooking-essentials platforms, where outcomes have been materially larger (scenario, not a forecast).
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Scenarios are constructed from cited revenue, distribution, and product-extension claims; comparable transaction multiples are general industry context rather than a captured source.
Sources
PUBLIC
[CNBC, Jun 2024] How Graza Olive Oil co-founder Andrew Benin built the business | https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/07/how-graza-olive-oil-co-founder-andrew-benin-built-the-business.html
[PitchBook] Graza 2026 Company Profile: Valuation, Funding & Investors | https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/490963-51
[Klaviyo] How Graza broke $500K in revenue | https://www.klaviyo.com/blog/guerrilla-marketing-for-ecommerce
[New Hope Network] Graza's bold, single-source olive oil started in a Spanish kitchen | https://www.newhope.com/brands/graza-bold-single-source-olive-oil-started-spanish-kitchen
[LinkedIn] How Olive Oil Startup Graza Brings In $48 Million A Year | https://www.linkedin.com/posts/graza_how-olive-oil-startup-graza-brings-in-48-activity-7206016685701574658-UnFG
[Dealroom] GRAZA company information, funding & investors | https://app.dealroom.co/companies/graza
[Crunchbase] Graza - Crunchbase Company Profile & Funding | https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/graza
[LinkedIn] Graza | LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/company/graza
[Crunchbase, Jun 2022] Seed Round - Graza | https://www.crunchbase.com/funding_round/graza-seed--78f87db5
[Business Insider, Jan 2023] A CEO's Apology Is a Make-or-Break Moment | https://www.businessinsider.com/ceo-apology-make-or-break-moment-how-to-do-right-2023-1
[The Cashmere Fund] How to Build a Cult Brand, According to Graza's Andrew Benin | https://www.thecashmerefund.com/podcast/andrew-benin
[Good Money with Derrick Kinney] SPECIAL REPLAY: Andrew Benin and Allen Dushi from Graza | https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/special-replay-andrew-benin-and-allen-dushi-from/id1531522259?i=1000679718410
[Read Receipt, May 2022] Read Receipt: andrew benin & graza | https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/andrew-benin-graza/id1510989383?i=1000563540839
[Taste Radio, 2024] Interview with Graza on 2024 gross sales trajectory | https://tasteradio.com
[Inside Retail, 2025] Graza retail expansion coverage | https://insideretail.com
[Perishable News] Graza launches Mayo line at Whole Foods, Kroger, Publix, Sprouts | https://www.perishablenews.com
[Good Housekeeping] Graza launches Nice Wine Pinot Meunier with Limited Addition Wines and MYSA Natural Wine | https://www.goodhousekeeping.com
[Inc.com] Graza headcount and product expansion coverage | https://www.inc.com
[Graza.co] Refill cans product page | https://graza.co
[Workable] Graza careers page | https://apply.workable.com/graza/?lng=en
Articles about Graza
- Graza Wants Every Home Cook's Counter to Hold a Green Squeeze Bottle — The Brooklyn olive oil brand is pushing from DTC into Costco and Whole Foods, and adding mayo and wine to the cart.