Beyond The Board with Graza

(upbeat music) - Welcome to Beyond the Board, where we break Brad with some of the most interesting industry leaders. I'm Jason Beekle and I'm honored to host in-depth conversations with some of the most innovative and impactful leaders in the food industry. Today I'm excited to talk to Andrew, Ben and the CEO and co-founder of Graza. Thank you so much for joining me today. - I'm so happy to be here. - Yeah, how are things going? - Cool, it's a crazy time. - Yes, it's just rolling out. Graza was a two-skew all-wheel company not too long ago, but now we've expanded our universe. So it's a hectic time, but honored to be doing it with Whole Foods. - Exciting time to be here and we're here live at Expo West this year in sunny California. - Yes. - What is your favorite thing about Expo? - Well, my favorite thing is usually the taco truck that I hit on the way to Expo, which I did this morning. I guess the weather probably a little break from New York. It's been brutal. - It's been a tough winter for you all. - But I'm Expo Special. It's special to see a lot of people. It's really amazing how many connections you make in this industry and having everyone concentrate around. This convention center is, I mean, it's always a great time. I feel like a lot of our brand collaborations have come from just being at Expo and walking and talking and not having so many people. - You know how I saw so many. - Yes, yes, some would say too many, but now we're being worth awful. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Well, maybe we'll get into that. Yeah, so for our listeners, we're at Expo West, which is the largest natural and organic food conference in the United States. And so we see a lot of new products and innovation. It's always a fun time to be here. But why don't we get started? So, you know, Graza now becoming one of the most recognizable olive oils that you're able to see on grocery shelves tells us a little bit of history of like how did this product come to ideation and to the market? We'd love to hear the in-depth story. - Yeah, I mean, it's, I think about it all the time because it's all rooted in product obsession. And I feel like that's kind of the through line that keeps me engaged is Graza started from product obsession obsessing over olive oil. I'd work in different industries, different consumer industries in the past, never fully in food, but I did cook for a time at Grammar City Tavern in the city. So, you know, food was always a major kind of connective tissue in my life. And I didn't know how I was going to figure out a career long terminate. And my wife is from Spain, tried some amazing olive oil on a trip to Spain and truly just had a sensory experience. Like this was not an opportunity rooted in a business case. It wasn't like how big is a market is olive oil or who were the biggest players in olive oil. It was, I just tried something and now I need to figure out how it's made and where it's made. And it was kind of an opally board of sorts. Turn the bottle, see who the manufacturer is, drive there, go to that mill, learn, ask them how much they export, not enough, where do you need to go, go to the next place and it was really an exploration. And for a long time, I was actually working at a different food company called Magic Spoon. And I was bringing bottles of olive oil to the office, doing tastings. And I think there was, there was obvious that I was no longer engaged in my hand with somewhere else. It was no longer on the, I mean, the world's possible employee ever incubating his new business inside a different company. But I couldn't stop. I just got obsessed with the product. I'm sure everyone loved the tasting, though. They were good tasting. So yeah, I was preparing little pan-gum-tamate, little anchovy toast with our olive oil. It was a good time. Yeah, it was a good time. It was outstanding. So it started out as sort of this sort of obsession and learning more about olive oil in general. What sort of help take it from sort of the experimentation being able to try out these different olive oils and looking at the sourcing to figure out like, how do we actually bring this product to market? What was sort of the process for you on that side? Yeah, the supply chain is probably the biggest piece to figure out because I think in our world you can walk into a co-manufacturing environment and they have a standard olive oil in a standard glass bottle and it's kind of post-year label here and you have no control over the spec or what's going into the bottle because there's so much efficiency in buying bulk. For us, it was challenging. Once we figured out the packaging, which actually got figured out by walking around Whole Foods shelves. And there's pictures early on, Grazadez, maybe a year pre-launch of us taking like a sriracha bottle and a tetrapack bottle and combining the caps and seeing how that looks on the olive oil set. It was just really happening live in the store. But once we had the packaging, it was actually really difficult because it's similar to going to like Bordeaux. Olive oil is very, you know, traditional historical. So it's like, in wine, if you went to Bordeaux and said, I want to put Bordeaux 1990, reserve, grand crew in a squeeze bottle, it's going to work. They would tell you to kick rocks. Like you've just insulted their heritage, their person, their father, their grandfather, their grandmother, everyone involved. Exactly. How could you possibly do this? So all oil was the same way. It was like a squeeze bottle. It doesn't really make sense. This is what we put it in. There's tins. There's that. So it was very difficult to convince people to do things our way. And I think that's why Graz has been successful because we're uncompromising in doing things our way. The same way we did it on day one is the day we're going to do it on year 50. So it was more difficult back then to convince partners to adjust to the oils that we wanted to buy, the way we wanted to store it, the way we wanted to bottle it. So that was kind of the supply chain side. It was difficult. And then the brand coming together-- I mean, that's just like pure creative exploration. It's an honor to be part of a branding process. You pay for it. And usually you get what you pay for. But that for an entrepreneur, I think, is the real extraction of all of your creative thoughts about the product that you want to bring to market. It's a great process to work with a great creative agency. Yeah. Well, I love love the product. And one of the things that I think is great is the packaging where it's so functional. And for me, that was one of the ahas where it's like, gosh, how did somebody think of this sooner? What was sort of the process that you guys went through and helped them work through the design and the decision? It's funny. It is a shower moment. So even though I'd use squeeze bottles on a cooking line, I did make the connection over those difficult years of life. It took a shower with a Dr. Bronner's bottle, which for those who use Dr. Bronner's note, it takes a really long time to wash off. That's a soap that just keeps soping so much. So plenty of time to think. And in the shower had the idea and thought Dr. Bronner's squeezing it on myself, I could squeeze olive oil like this, ran out, had a three liter tin of whole food, 365, Mediterranean blend, cleaned out the Dr. Bronner's bottle, which also takes a very long time, filled it up with oil, squeezed it in a large cast iron pan, was like, oh my god, we're on to something. And then went on YouTube, Gordon Ramsay, Microsoft Paint, he had a squeeze bottle in his hand, put a green box over it, and branded grounds for the first time and put the word sizzle. And it all happened in one day. It was like a pure, very fortunate train of thought. And it's funny, you look back on that picture, we do a onboarding with all of our employees that's a photo journey. It's like 750 pictures of pre-launch and kind of first year. And you look at that picture and you're like, it really isn't that different. You didn't-- I mean, obviously the bottle now is different. The imagery, the characters, the world has come together. But it was a squeeze bottle of this color in his hand. It was all there. Yeah, no. And it's just one of those. I just kept saying, gosh, how did somebody not think of this? So you're-- and when you have such a high quality product, and functionally, it works so well. And whether you're going on a cast iron pan or put in a little drizzle on top of a salad, it's so functional there. I think we got lucky with having something tactile that people could really experience in a different way, because you're always pouring olive oil from the glass bottle or from a big jug. And there were functional issues with that where you used too much, used too little. This definitely made people feel like they had control. In the kitchen, and I think in a time when everyone is inspired by chefs more than they've ever been chefs of a broader voice than they've ever had, obviously with social media, the amount of content with chefs cooking, it made you feel like that at home. In an instant, an olive oil never really made people feel that way. We made people feel that way. And when you're building a feeling, as opposed to a product, you're really onto something. Yeah. Well, one of the things you're talking about is some of the work around the sourcing. So can you talk through some of the details as far as the work that you go through as you work with some of your producers and the standards that you are looking to bring into your product? Yeah. I mean, since they one have been single origin, single varietal, not because we believe in those buzzwords, I'd say, for signals of quality, more so because we know what varietals we want, and we know where they're grown. Hence the origin. So still to this day, 95% of our oil is piqual, which is a very pungent, usually very high in oleic acid, high in oleocampthols, which are the things that make the back of your throat burn. People probably know them as antioxidants or probably phenols. And those oils traditionally for the American market were used as oils that you would blend into different oils to create a more smooth and buttery flavor profile. you do. take 90% of Arbiquina and 10% of Piqual. And you would say Arbiquina's little two blend for me right now, but this one's way too strong. You'd bring them together and that would be kind of your master or Miller's blend, whatever you want to call it. And that's not to say that's a bad practice. We just really liked the stuff that was 10%. We built a product based on our palettes, not the palettes of a consumer that theoretically, we really didn't know that much about. Consumer Insides didn't have a place in the founding of this company, what was being created was something that we liked. And that's extended to our other product categories, making products that we like how they taste. And then what help and try to educate people on why all will could and can and maybe should taste this way. So that single origin single variety of practice has been very difficult to scale out. And we have expanded to different countries. So we source COVID-19 from Portugal, we source Athenolia from Greece, we source Chitui from Tunisia, we source Picholini from Morocco. And in every single bottle, we're always printing the origin, the village that it's from, the varietal. And that creates a very difficult label stock situation. Because usually it's like, "Oh, it's coming out of this tank." And someone's running to get the labels and putting it on the labeling machine. "No, use it right, is it right?" But I think we've had success scaling out inefficiency. And that's probably costly. But we think it reaps the rewards. And we're proud of it. And you bring the transparency to the customer. And the farmers proud of it. Because a lot of these farmers in Tunisia, when they see the word "kairun" their village on a bottle, instead of it just going into another master blend of olive oil, they feel so proud. Because most of the world doesn't even know that a place like Tunisia grows olive. And even over Tunisia is on a map. Right? It's in North Africa. It's in the Mediterranean. It's right next to Spain. So, I think Graza intentionally is not necessarily tied to one place. And people hear the name and they don't know where it's from. Which in our industry, so much of the marketing in all will was always tied to origin. Right? Does it sound Italian, feel Italian? And that was a signifier of quality. And I think we intentionally went the other direction and said, "Graza is whatever you want it to be. All we're trying to do is promise you that the oil inside is excellent, independent of where it comes from, which will tell you where it comes from." It's a different angle. Yeah, absolutely. Can you talk a little bit about the different formulation that you have between the sizzle and the drizzle and what went into that and what was the idea around having sort of two different varieties there? I think that that helps us a lot. And when you're starting businesses in CBG, there's usually a talk about consumer education. And when I hear that, here, that's incredibly expensive. Because, right, olive oil is interesting because you already probably have it in your pantry. I just have to convince you to give mine a try. Because most people have been cooking with it or your parents use it, so you use it. So then the sizzle drizzle was doing that education for us, but in a really palatable way. So drizzle, you kind of know what it stands for because you're drizzling. It's the function. And that's an early harvest olive oil, which could mean a lot of things because when is early. But for us, it's harvested in October. It's usually on the same exact farms that we're sourcing sizzle from. The yield of oil, when you harvest in October, is usually between 12 and 13%. So each olive only has 12 to 13% oil. So when you're making 500 milliliters of that product, you need a lot more olives. It makes it a lot more costly to manufacture. Also, the olives don't really want to come off the trees. Think of the tree as kind of the mother and the olives are its babies. And it does not want, but it's nature. And you have to be a bit more forceful in taking them off the tree because what people don't know about extra virgin olive oil, which is crazy when I learned this, extra virgin olive oil is new. It used to be olive oil. Extra virgin olive oil is maybe 40 years old, right? Olive harvest was weighed until May when the olives were, you know, 30% fat. Totally rancid, moldy didn't matter, but I was gonna get the most oil out of it. In fact, I'll let them fall off the trees because I don't even want to get up on the stool and harvest it. So all the olives would fall and you would walk around with the rakes, scrape them up, wash them and press them and that was oil. That was really high acidity oil, but it was plentiful. And people were able to handle it in the Mediterranean and then the oil grades is a newer invention and a good one because the earlier you have a style of olive oil, the more polyphenols, the more antioxidants it has, and the more flavor because of those polyphenols and antioxidants. So that's drizzle. It's a special product and I'm mostly proud of providing it at scale because the market for that product was small. In nature, there were a lot of small brands that maybe would produce 1,000 bottles, 1,500 bottles, 2,000 bottles of this kind of first day of harvest product, but it was very cost prohibitive for an average consumer to participate with that. Maybe it would be a gift that you would give at the end of the year, but then it's a really expensive gift. So are you really gonna use it or you're gonna use half the bottle as that $20 that I'm using? It was kind of a product that would collect dust in your house, even though olive oil was supposed to be used as quickly as possible. It's not wine. So that's drizzle. And that's us working with farmers to really pay six, seven, eight months ahead of time to improve their cash flow cycles and also compel them to participate in this movement into early harvest olive oil with us. Because it's better for the tree. The tree uses the post harvest time in drizzle to recuperate during the rainy season in Spain, which is usually during harvest. So the pruning that you can do quickly after harvest, it's a great thing and we're proud to do it. And then sizzle harvested in December. So usually six weeks later and that gives you 18, 19, 20, sometimes 21% yield. So just waiting six weeks, olive is taken on water during the rainy season, produces a more mellow flavor, still be quality usually, but it makes more sense for cooking. Because really when you use olive oil and you add heat, a lot of the flavors either absorbed by what you're cooking or dissipates. So drizzle's meant to be used raw and sizzle's meant for cooking. And the names definitely help people know right out the gate. - Yeah, you know, that was a big rambul, but I'm very passionate about olive oil. - No, no, no, of course. So what are your favorite ways to use each of the products? - Yeah, drizzle, I have a sneaky favorite way. I make icing out of it for cakes and desserts. So if you just mix powdered sugar and drizzle in a Pyrex, it makes like a crazy lime green olive oil frosting. But you can put on anything in the flavors, is nuts and the visuals are amazing. When you show your friends, it's like they can't process. - I've had olive oil, ice cream I've put olive oil on ice cream, but I've never thought about olive oil frosting. - Yeah, it's amazing. I like olive oil in sweets. And then sizzle, I mean, I don't know, I use sizzle for everything. Like we are lucky. Olive oil, what people forget about is all these cooking oils, they have a place in the American food ecosystem because olive oil is more expensive than a lot of other cooking oils. So to be able to use olive oil every single day, if you're a consumer that can, it's already good fortune because it is a healthy cooking fat. And our game is not kind of participating in, saying we're better or worse than anybody else. We all have a place, but olive oil is expensive compared to other cooking fats, price per fluid ounce. So I am lucky that I get to put some garlic and olive oil in a pan and it creates the beautiful thing that garlic and olive oil does as the base of most of our cooking. - Yeah, one of the things that I'm really impressed about in going back to the sourcing that you've done here is the efforts that you do in working with your suppliers and looking at the different ways to help support their business sustainably as well. And obviously having two different products has been really critical in there, but how have you sort of worked, now that you've grown the business to continue to scale that in a meaningful way and supporting more and more farmers in these practices? - Yeah, I mean, primarily we use traditional harvesting methods which are inherently more expensive because it require more labor, right? So it's a dying art in olive oil. Most of the investment in big food investment groups is going into super-hydensity agriculture which is necessary actually because we need to keep feeding people where there's more people in super-hydensity agriculture and olives produces a lot of product. And that kind of creates a base for our entire industry because there is product availability because of that. And honestly, that empowers us to play the other side of the coin which is a lot of our farms are small, small plots of land that's more expensive to harvest. But by becoming the buyer of that olive and of that oil at scale, it's become an efficient outlet for farmers who communicate with each other usually in small villages and say, who are you selling olives to? And do they pay on time? And are they nice people? Are they trustworthy? It's that simple, right? So we've built these relationships a lot through word of mouth in Spain as being the outlet for high quality olive oil because we're paying more than the commodity price always. Usually 25, 30% more than what is a publicly published index in Spain. So we've built a good name for ourselves. And I think it's nice because we're kind of viewed as a free agent because we have things that everyone wants. everyone wants to sell high quality olive oil because it's expensive. So you're a great, great, great margin for them. And we have volume. Everyone wants to bottle that bottle. So we, you know, we, we, we, as, as quickly as we've grown, I think the industry has celebrated us because we brought a lot of attention to olive oil, a lot of attention to high quality olive oil and, and it's helped us in Spain build our name. As sort of the word of mouth helped also helped you sort of get introduced with new potential farmers and suppliers or what's the way that you sort of help expand geographically as well. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think we're always thinking about integrating deeper into the supply chain. So for us, we're exploring, you know, leasing land and actually farming on our own. You know, it's, it's difficult. You want to respect how difficult it is in a sense. And it's not a cost savings activity. So we're actually figuring out who really knows the land the best. And those are the people that we would contract and work with to probably manage what we want to do, rather than kind of entering thinking we're the smartest people that, you know, the people have been doing this for a long time. And a lot of secrets and tradition has passed down. And, and we need to empower the people that know how to do it to keep doing it. Rather than insert ourselves as, you know, whiz kids that are going to figure out a better way to do it. So, so we're looking at integrating into our supply chain. And then yeah, I think word of mouth, especially internationally. You know, a lot of our farmers maybe are contracted for projects in North Africa or in Portugal. And they'll bring us with them and introduce us to the mills and the growers there because it's kind of like a nerdy community. If you're doing great things with olive oil in Spain, like someone's going to invite you to port your goal to be like tell me you're nerdy things that you're doing. So we get to piggyback on those trips and always be positioned as like, well, we're going to make all this great stuff and they're going to buy it. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Why did you have sort of that first aha moment where you realized, wow, we could really disrupt the olive oil industry. Like we actually have something here that, you know, when did you want to have that experience? Was it early on? Was it, you know, years in? Like what was the I think I'm still in misbelief to be honest. I think it was even before it launched. I remember getting asked questions from from investors early on that said no to investing in Graza like, you know, with such saturated category, there's so many brands. I mean, you look at an average grocery shelf. There are a lot of brands. How do you decide? And I was like the reason you find this uncompelling is the reason I find it compelling. Right? That I see opportunity where you see difficulty. So, so I feel like we knew we knew before we knew what the shelf looked like. We knew the conventions that existed. We knew the marketing playbook was was repeated. We knew the culinary interactions between olive oil were usually tied to, you know, barata and tomatoes and pasta. We knew that there was a space to kind of veer and do things differently and bring the product into different culinary spaces. So, so that's it. We were pretty confident going into it, but I mean, I'm still in disbelief. What was it like the first time seeing the products on the shelf? Oh my god. Stressful. The bottles were like I'm like a yeah, I'm if you at work, I'm not the optimist at the office. So even though they're on shelf, I see like a speck of dust and I'm like I can't believe it. But it's not easy to put olive oil in a squeeze bottle. We're still learning that these days. There's difficulties in doing it. So it was amazing though. I mean, I remember when we launched at at Whole Foods and it was at one of the new store openings and I saw actually it was it was off shelf just because you know, we had a great relationship right out the gate and we were there handing out coupons for for people to try the product and a lot of people had seen it online already and that's where I was like, oh, you know, I think that we are culturally relevant even without starting any marketing or having any marketing budget. You know, it was cool. Yeah, which store was the was the launch at your number? Oh, that was on Madison in New York. No, Matt. Yeah, no, Matt. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's where we met a lot of the team. That's where we met some amazing people that that listened to us when we said that this bottle would do great in produce because it's not going to break, which would be a disaster in produce. And it looks really good. And say it's green and yeah, it's good. It's it's we always yeah, we always viewed ourselves as like we're okay playing second fiddle like the tomato is amazing like putting us right behind it. We're okay with that. We don't need to be the star of the show. We like we are friends with garlic. We're friends with avocados. We're friends with tomatoes. We're friends with toast. Let them be the star, but you need all the oil to kind of bring it together. I'll bring it all together. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. So when you think about all the effort that went in before you got into that very first store, what was one of the biggest learnings that you had and what would you do differently as far as that or a challenge that you went through? Oh man. I mean supply chain I think is like where I mean, we still forecasting is so hard. I mean, we are we perpetually under forecast. The good problem to have I guess. It is a good problem to have. It's better than the other way. Until you have retail retail score cards and you know, everything else that comes with it, but I would have made so much more product. I would you know, I think that I think there was some fear when you have like maybe a hundred K in the bank account and it's going to you're going to spend 70 of it on product. You're like if that doesn't work, then what happens to me? So probably would have made more and probably would have made more 15 times since then and different occasions. You know, so you know, mayo moving faster than I thought I would probably should have made more. So, but yeah, I think you're probably beefing up the supply chain earlier on, you know, and really understanding kind of simulating the pressure testing your supply chain is how we call it at work now. We've run simulations where we say, okay, if the business doubled overnight, something crazy, right? What would happen? What would we do? Where can it move? Where can't it move? Right? How much can we actually support? I wish we had a little bit of that thinking earlier on. Well, you know, right after you you all launched you were in two regions, you know, really, really quickly there and it was one of the most successful product launches that we had seen in a long time and obviously a lot of buzz that was around it. I know our team members love the product as well. What do you credit that early success to do you think? The secret sauce. Yeah. I think if I knew the answer to that question, I would be doubling and tripling and quadrupling down on that every single day. I wish I wish it was that easy, right? That would be the easiest investor mindset to Graza. I think Graza is a confluence of many different things and I think that's why it's really difficult to emulate. I think that for one consumer, the packaging really resonates with them. I think for another consumer they could care less about the packaging and they care about the oil inside. I think for somebody else seeing people that they trust cooking with it online is the reason they buy it. I think for other people us being there when promotional support is necessary to drive like I think it's a little bit of everything, which is why I think there's only one Graza. I think I think we you know if you asked even our marketing team, our commercial team right now the answer to that question they would not know yet. We don't have enough data to know. I'd like to believe that the brand itself is probably strong enough in the packaging, the label, everything to get someone to buy once. It's very interesting looking. It's very engaging. It's on social media and like we like to say it's a it's a premium, right? It's not cheap but it's a palatable premium. It's not double the category average so it's inviting as a price point but I mean we're not in this to sell one bottle like we're in the sell the second one so at that time someone had to have tried it. And do they love the tactile experience or they love the flavor. And either one of those is enough reason to drive the second purchase and third and so on. So so yes you know I think it's a lot of different things. I think we did have some good pre-launch marketing though. We'd gifted a lot of product. And I think even the content creator community treated us differently than they treated other brands or their all because we really weren't pushy. The brand itself is very friendly. And like we weren't saying we need you to do something. We want you to post. Well you know it was just like hey you know have fun with this. Yeah. And it was very serendipitous. Yeah. Yeah. As the same time it's like we get a lot of credit for the bottle. A bottle works against us half the time because there's a purist in all. Yeah. It doesn't not buy the plastic bottle. They don't want a bi-plastic bottle. Right. Now we have glass bottles. It's great. They look exactly like these bottles. In fact I think they look too much like them where people on shelf don't even know that Graza sells in glass. We thought it was funny. But I think we could make some improvements because it it looks so it does look so similar. It's crazy. As soon as you touch you definitely. Oh it's like okay. You got to touch. You got to touch. So it's definitely not the packaging because that works against us half the time. This is a certain consumer too cool for school. No. way this can be high quality, right? So that's a fight that we have to fight. This isn't easy, you know, to have gotten this big. I mean, I got data this morning like it's the second time that over a 13 and 26 week period that crosses the fourth largest extro virgin olive oil company in America, inclusive of private label. Would you ever thought that? No. No, and that's not-- And you haven't had the ceiling yet? No. And that's not-- that's honestly not-- that wasn't the goal at the beginning. The goal was the product that oil inside the supply chain. And it's still that way. It's still that way. That's where I spend most of my time. You know, a big thing for us is, you know, we want to work with brands who can bring innovation and integrity, differentiation, and obviously those are areas that you've all focused on. How is working with Whole Foods? Like, you know, what were some of the things that our team was able to help support you along the journey in those areas? Yeah. I mean, you know our crew there, you know, our support. I'll shout them out. I mean, John, amazing, Brooke, amazing, Anamaria, amazing, Monica, she's gone on to do different things, but was the first person in our inbox, actually. So I think we really were a product of true forging at Whole Foods, outreach by you guys. We didn't come to you. You came to us. You found us, you asked for it. We weren't ready. We made it happen anyway. Retail was not part of our plan for the first two years. And we were over here in that. I was just shocked. We didn't think we were going to be ready for it. We didn't think we could finance it because I mean, this stuff we have to buy. The terms on olive oil are awful, right? So the financing, it was difficult. So EA was truly a Whole Foods discovery product and a catalyst for everything else that came. I think we're self-aware, and that's why we continue to invest in Whole Foods because we know it's where we started. But yeah, I think there's a lot of pride on your side of finding us and giving us the chance and supporting us with space. And it still happens today. It's like everyone text me like, "Oh, you're off shelf at Whole Foods again, but you're not on promo. What's going on?" I'm like, "No, no, you don't get it. We need that space to stay in stock. That's not a favor than anyone's doing to anyone. That's not what's going on here. These people wouldn't just give out free space. That's not how this works. They want to sell another bottle of Graza. And so that space is necessary. It's our job to keep that in stock now, which isn't easy either. So Whole Foods spin the beginnings of Graza for sure. Well, let's talk about this new product that we've got here that you've just launched. Where did that idea come from? What's the passion behind it? I mean, Mayo's got a lot of oil in it. So we have been asked by Whole Foods and by other retailers to launch everything under the sun. I think it is true that a good retail buyer is looking for innovation, taking risks, things that might not work, but still moving things and pushing the envelope. And I think Whole Foods is a good job of that. But we decided to not launch products for a long time. Maybe we did a partnership, a small one here and there to test the waters, but Graza was an olive oil company. We launched different sizes. We launched Frizzle, which is still derived from olives. We launched refill cans for our olive oil, but it took us a long time to get here because there was a belief that we should just kind of stain our lane and focus. But then we created a criteria for what innovation meant to Graza. What was kind of allowed and what wasn't? Because most people would think we should launch vinegar, olive oil vinegar. And we're like, hmm, it takes a long time to get through a bottle of vinegar. I like things that are going to be touched three times a day, which is what I think about sizzle and drizzles like breakfast, lunch, dinner, eggs in the morning, salad, lunch, salmon, sweet potatoes, dinner. Those are things that people buy at Whole Foods all the time. And I'm a part of that. So we like higher velocity categories. And there needed to be a major through line with olive oil. So Graza is not at the forefront of like an anti-seed oil movement. Let me say we actually celebrate other oils because they're all necessary. But what we like about olive oil is that we think fat, right, which is nine calories per gram should taste like something. And that's once again with mayo, kind of a deviation because the oils and mayonnaise is primarily made with are completely neutral. All they are is a functional element in creating an emulsion. Now, it's saying that's a bad thing, but we like our oils to taste like something and impart that taste on the things that we're making with them. So these manays is taste completely different. And that's also very Graza, right? We're doing things our way. So those are our three kind of pillars for product innovation. We're doing it our way oil is a major through line and it's high touch, right? And mayonnaise checks those boxes. And you know, we went aggressive. We did three different formulations. And you know, that was very intentional because there's different flavor profiles for different use cases, which is very similar to what we did in olive oil. There's a lot of our DNA all over it. And it's rolling out at Whole Foods nationally and off to a great start. And we're excited to once again remind people that I'm buying mayo. What's mayo made from? Well, it's 70% oil. There are s's eggs and lemon juice and vinegar and other things. My Graza olive oil goes into my mayo. We're really excited about that connection that we can create and how they taste. So so big thing for us. First time we've ever done it expanded outside of olive oil, even though there's still a lot of olive oil in there. And it comes with its challenges in terms of manufacturing, which we view as a moat. It's a very specific equipment to make this product. So you know, mayonnaise is funny. Like you can either do an emulsion, which is just thinking of a Vitamix, like, yeah, which if you put olive oil in a Vitamix, it gets incredibly accurate because the cellular structure explodes and doesn't rejoin. Essentially, this polyphenol is just pop. They get very bitter. So we have to essentially explode a droplet of olive oil into really small nanoparticles at the same time that we explode egg into nanoparticles and the same thing we explode everything that's in there into the same size nanoparticle and then combine them all together at the same time, at the same speed. It's really it's really cool. So good luck to anyone else. It's going to try to make that. How long did the product development take on something like this? It took a while. Yeah, it took took like two years. So so we didn't know if we were going to do it, but we were still working on it. There's not that many people that can make it. So so at this which adds risk because then it's like who's got leverage against to in terms of pricing and supply chain redundancy. So so it was risky, but but we did it and we think it tastes amazing. And that's our platform for it. We are a taste company. We think our olive oil adds taste to the things that you're cooking it adds taste to your left. We think our mayonnaise adds taste to the things that you're making with it. And it's been a it's been a fun transition for us. I think that I think that there will be more innovation from Graza. Yeah, I'm looking looking forward to that. Well, you definitely have a really loyal connected customer. What what of your insights sort of taught taught you or the anecdotes or the feedback that you're getting? What's traded that really strong loyal connection? I think mostly mostly taste honestly. Like I like the review we get is this is better than what I was buying before or the other review that we get is I thought this was you know a scam or a joke. And actually I love it. In a sense, which is fine. We'll take that. But I think I think I think we've definitely opened up. It could have been because people weren't tasting olive oil before. Like they were just buying it and putting it into a pan and like we ship it to your house. And there's a whole tasting note that says wait before you cook do this, smell it do that. And so I don't even taste it smell it. So they're actually experiencing the way I think so. Yeah, I think because that's what we talk about in the background. That's what's on our channels. That's what on on our Instagram and on our TikTok. So I think I think mostly the the taste because now they can get squeeze bottles from other people. You know, whole foods included. Literally if they wanted to get a different squeeze bottle of olive oil, there are 30 other ones out there. So it's it is not the bottle. Everyone launching squeeze bottles has been the proof point that it's not the bottle. So tired of hearing about it. So so I think it's the taste. I think they can tell the quality is there. And I think they really like our messaging or communications are creative. I think there's a lot of authenticity to Garaza. You know, we we we um like for a long time like I was saying with the brand like this too cool for school thing. We needed to own it and say okay, like we are trendy sure. That's not a bad thing. We're also trend setting. So one doesn't come without the other, you know, so it's not going to be right for everyone, but we are trendsetters. In this category and ideally in other ones too and we have to own that. And that might mean it might take time to get the next consumer segment over the hump. But that's okay. Who's in a rush? Yeah. Yeah. You're mentioning a little bit earlier some of the collaborations that you've done and obviously here at Expo West has been inspiring for some of those. What's the process for making the decision? Because I'm sure you have dozens and dozens and dozens of reach reaching out. How do you go through that process of deciding this is is it gonna be a good match for us to do something together? - How's it gonna taste? Is the biggest criteria? - Great, I love you saying that. - Yeah, it's like, people always have a good deal on the Whole Foods Market shelf. It's not only in his ass, tastes great, but it's gotta taste better than every single thing that's already on the shelf today. 'Cause swapping something out that's just like for like is not gonna be different enough. - Not gonna add to the category at all. - Exactly, exactly. - So usually based on who's coming to us, we can evaluate what their current portfolio looks like. - It is true, I mean, because olive oil can be an input in everything, I mean from a, from a, you can make oreos, you know, use olive oil instead of palm oil. Literally, it's anything that has oil, we can be there. So we get a ton of outreach people wanna leverage the brand. I think more so than they wanna actually leverage the ingredient. So we have a strict process for saying no. And the ones that we've said yes to, I think there's a lot of brand alignment and we enjoy the product quality without Grazza. We think that we can influence the taste profile by adding extra virgin olive oil or olive oil into it. And yeah, a few of our collaborations have been retail-ready products on your shelves. We, I mean the Ithaca hummus collaboration that we did. - It's outstanding. - It's the number one cold dip at Whole Foods. So that's just alchemy, I think. And we did a firehacker collab. But that's because we were eating firehacker crackers ourselves before. So it's like, a lot of it is just, I mean there is intuition there. But I'd say we say yes to, you know, less than 1% of the opportunities that we get. But I will hit you up for Whole Foods collab product one day. - Okay, alright. (laughing) - Well, here we are on that. Well, despite the tremendous success that you've had, you all are still in like the early days. So what do you see for Grazza over the next five and 10 years? - Hopefully retaining our current employees. I feel like that's the base, you know. - See for us. - Yeah, being a place that people are inspired to work, inspired by the product that we're selling, inspired by the process, inspired by the growth, by the challenges, I think like homegrown talent means a lot to us. So hopefully a lot of the same faces in five years. I think if there's any slow down in our core business, which is olive oil, then we've made some wrong decisions along the way. So kind of figuring out how do we support the base and how do we support innovation? Organizationally is most of the finesse that I think we're gonna have to build that muscle and I'm sure we'll make some mistakes we already have. And I think that we're gonna continue investing in our supply chains and becoming experts in oil production, oil manufacturing, oil storage. Not to tell that story, right? It's funny if you look at our Instagram, we hardly talk about Spain. We hardly talk about our meals and our farms because it feels almost disingenuous. We don't own them. We're beneficiaries of them. So then we got a little bit tired of like the manufacturing story as being a sales angle. It fell as a little greenwashy to us. But this year, I do think we'll go to Spain and try to tell the story of the things that we're doing differently because they're the way that we're doing things. So yeah, I think more integration in the supply chain always necessary. As a quality protection, not as a cost protection. - Yeah, well, what's ready to hop into the lightning round? But sort of as the last question, when you think about sort of your early days, maybe even before you saw the opportunity for Grazita Cum DeFruition to where you are now, how do you define success differently? Both personally and professionally here from the company perspective. How has that evolved over time? - Personally, I mean, I had kids throughout this entrepreneurial journey. So the amount of time, the amount of bed times that I'm able to facilitate is my measure of success. I love that personally because we work a lot. And then professionally, yeah, I mean, Whole Foods is a good example. It's like we became the number one olive oil brand pretty quickly. So where do you go from there? Growth is intoxicating. When you're up into the right greener pastures, everywhere, everyone's happy, but it's like, what happens when you get to the top? And what do you do? And how do your strategies change? And how do you collaborate? How do you make decisions? I think that has been a new success for us. Is learning how to have those conversations and learning how to honestly play defense as much as we play offense sometimes. So I think that's growth for us. It's like strategically in the business where we're different than we were before. It's not growth at all costs. It never has been. So staying true to that. And yeah, that's success for us. - And if you were to give advice to other entrepreneurs who have some of the same aspirations that you had-- - Good luck. - With the Grasza. - Yeah. - It's a number one piece of advice you give them. - Um. For the first three years, listen to yourself a lot. And then eventually be able to shift to listen to other people. - Okay. - Yeah. - Good advice. - Yeah. - All right, ready for the lightning round? - Let's do it. - All right, let's go. Which olive oil do you reach for the most in your own kitchen, frizzle, sizzle, or drizzle? - Drizzle. - And sometimes I cook with drizzle because I break the rules. - Oh, it does. - Oh, it does. - You know, it's like everyone comes over and they take all my sizzle. So then I'm just left with drizzle. I gotta do stuff, you know? - I've had to do the same when I was out. - He said it. - Yeah. - Where do you find inspiration? - Where do I find inspiration? - Probably hiking. Honestly, probably upstate New York. That's like the moment. - Seeing my dog run around the woods for me is cathartic. - I'll stand standing. How do you unwind after a stressful day? - I make play-doh penguins with my daughter. - Great. Pantry MVP besides Graza. - Bianca de Napoli. - Can'timate us. - That's standing. Hardest lesson you've learned as a founder. - This is gonna be a lot more emotional than economical, I'd say. Like the human side of this is, there's a lot of emotional burden with a growing team. - Yep. Cooking hack that you can't live without. - Microplane. - Yeah. - For everything. - Favorite Whole Foods Market item outside of Graza? - I feel like that's the same as like my pantry staple. If I had to name another one. - You guys have this butter right now. It's like, I think it's called ivies. It's like in a black block. It's like a carbon neutral from England. Oh my God. It's so good. - Yeah. - Graza loves butter. - Yeah. - We're friends. Yeah. - Go to meal to cook and impress a dinner guest. - Got meatless. - And finish the sentence right now. I'm most excited about mayonnaise. - mayonnaise. - We're not expecting that one. Thanks for joining us on Beyond the Board. Until next time, let's keep cooking with purpose, leading with innovation and supporting brands like Graza that bring a fresh approach to every dish. (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]