Graza is an olive oil company that Andrew Benin launched at the beginning of 2022. He spent the early years of his career working for direct-to-consumer brands like Casper and Warby Parker while apprenticing in Michelin-starred New York City restaurants. He moved to Spain to live with his wife’s parents during the COVID-19 pandemic and became obsessed with olive oil. Benin spent a year tinkering with different recipes to find the sweet spot between affordability and flavor. This work led to the launch of Graza, a venture capital–backed olive oil startup. Graza has two olive oils, Drizzle and Sizzle, that come in squeezable bottles. Graza farms, picks, presses, and bottles its two products in Spain. Early in October, the firm harvests the Drizzle olives, which have a spicy flavor. November and December is harvest time for Sizzle olives—these olives produce a mellower cooking oil. Graza got off to a good start. Its website went live in January 2022 at the time of the firm’s launch. Bon Appetit and Food & Wine ran features about the firm in their publications and Graza was gaining traction on Instagram. Initially, Graza was a direct-to-consumer brand, but its products found their way into retail stores quickly. Today, the firm’s sales revenue is about the same in the two channels, online and brick-and-mortar locations. Graza’s first holiday season (2022) was rough. Orders came in faster than expected following the products’ appearances in many gift guides. Some customers ordered three sets of Drizzle and Sizzle, thinking they would receive three separate packages that in turn they could give to others as gifts. Instead, what reached them was a single box with six loose bottles in it. Some orders came damaged or with peeling logos. Others came late after bad weather delayed shipments. Benin felt a strong need to apologize. Rather than huddling with public relations specialists or hiring a crisis management firm, Benin wrote an apology email himself and sent it to everyone who ordered Gaza olive oils in the previous 60 days (35,544 people) to make amends. The subject line read “Learning from our mistakes.” In plain talk, Benin explained what went wrong, took full responsibility for the errors, and offered a discount for future orders. According to Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Cohen, who wrote an article about Benin’s email and was a recipient of the email himself, “It was raw, transparent about uncertainty, and messy with typos and misspellings. It was also oddly entertaining and strangely charming.” What happened next is compelling. People read the email. Its open rate was 78 percent, which is high for an email that a company sends. Customers responded positively, saying they appreciated Benin’s honesty and would remain Graza customers.....

Discussion Questions:

1. On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the highest), how important is transparency, honesty, and fairness to a firm such as Graza? What might a startup lose if its customers feel that it is falling short with respect to these qualities?
2. Why do you think Benin’s email struck a chord with his firm’s customers?
3. To what degree do you think Benin handled the 2022 holiday season crisis appropriately?
4. What can entrepreneurial firms learn from Graza’s experience? What did you learn from it?