For the Love of Olive Oil: How Graza (With Cin7) Drizzled, Sizzled, and Frizzled It’s Way to Success

Graza was born out of one founder’s love of olive oil and one founder’s belief in the power of technology. With Cin7, the award-winning olive oil company has reaped a harvest of success.

Andrew Benin’s passion for olive oil began during a road trip in Spain.

“On that trip, I feel like I tasted olive oil for the first time,” he writes. “My family in Spain thought I had totally lost my mind, speaking about olive oil 24/7, but my wheels were cranking.”

Andrew and his longtime acquaintance Allen Dushi, along with a team of talented individuals, set out to build a new type of olive oil company, one that was not deceptive in its marketing or too expensive, and one that produced olive oil that was made to be used, 100% fresh, and straight from the source.

“Graza launched in January 2022 as an e-commerce business, and on launch day, a Whole Foods buyer reached out to us about launching in their store” says Laura Romano, Senior Director of Operations. “Before the end of Graza’s first year in business, we were on shelves in Whole Foods, which is kind of unheard of in this category.”

She adds, “Growth right from the beginning was big.”

Big is an understatement. Graza’s single-origin, high-quality, and affordable olive oil made its way onto the shelves at Target, Walmart, Costco, and grocery stores around the country within its first few years while also selling on Amazon (first through Amazon FBA and now wholesale). Laura says they jumped from two SKUs to 14 SKUs in the same short amount of time, and through it all, the Graza team pressed into the belief that starting off right required a strong technology foundation.

“Allen’s background was in fashion, food, and clothing manufacturing. He knew the importance of an inventory management system right from the beginning, so before the first bottle was sold, we were set up on Cin7.”

Extracting Success, One Olive at a Time

Graza’s product lineup includes three forms of Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO): Drizzle for eating (not heating), Sizzle for everyday cooking, and Frizzle for high heat cooking. Its variety of always fresh olive oils helps Graza stand out from the competition, as does its unique packaging. Andrew created chef-inspired, easy-to-use, not-seen-anywhere-else squeeze bottles, then launched aluminum refill cans, and finally, delivered a glass option with a pop-up spout.

Whichever bottle type it comes in, Graza has hit the right note with consumers. Thankfully, they were well prepared to manage their growing financial, inventory, supply chain, production, vendor, warehouse, and transportation needs.

“Cin7 is an easy-to-use system that has been very, very helpful. It’s also an accessible system that helps us onboard new team members easily.”

Robust Benefits Refine Graza’s Future

For Laura as well as Maddie Metzger, Senior Manager of Supply Chain, Cin7 and its continuous support ensure that their everyday operations run smoothly. This includes their supply chain requirements, such as:

• Purchase orders
• Production jobs
• Branch transfers
• Inventory counts

It also includes their sales and fulfillment tasks, such as checking on their automated sales orders and ensuring that information flows accurately between the office, their warehouses, and beyond.

“Almost every person on our team is in Cin7 every single day.”

As an inventory management system that aids the whole Graza team in successfully completing their daily tasks, Cin7 delivers a host of benefits, such as ensuring seamless integrations between Graza’s multiple sales channels. These include Shopify for their e-commerce needs, QuickBooks for accounting, and SPS Commerce as its EDI provider.

Another critically important integration? Parabola, an AI-powered, no-code visual data automation platform they found via a recommendation by StartupCPG.

Parabola helps Graza compile its growing and complex shipping information. It acts as Graza’s container tracker (every finished bottle from Spain is shipped to the U.S. via a container), making life less rancid for the company’s team member who manages the whole process.

“Parabola helps us ingest the dozens of PDFs that come via email every week that connect to our containers coming from Spain,” says Maddie. “The paper trail is vital for getting into Cin7 and for customs, inventory, lot tracking, price validation, and process flows. Parabola spits out a beautifully formatted, very simple, concise container report. It’s a lifesaver.”

Maddie estimates that Parabola has saved them from two to six hours a week. As the Graza team marinates in the incredible time savings brought by all of Cin7’s integrations, they’re also enjoying:

• Accurate Traceability and Inventory: Using Cin7, the Graza team can track its products, the components that make up the products, and their orders from start to finish.
• Diverse Reporting Capabilities: Different reports, including their beloved projected ending inventory report, pull information from Cin7 to get insights into their inventory health. Plus, with Cin7 acting as their single source of truth, they can find discrepancies in their warehouses and immediately adjust them in Cin7.
• Smooth Order Workflows: Graza’s sales orders through Shopify and SPS Commerce via EDI go directly into Cin7, helping them get orders in and out easily without manual effort or errors.
• Connected Warehouses and Easy Branch Transfers: With Cin7, warehouse connections and inventory transfers between branches are no issue. Team members know where stock is at all times, orders are received and sent automatically, and they don’t have to double enter anything.

Additionally, Graza uses Cin7 to ensure its cost of goods sold (COGS) is accurate, something Laura says is incredibly important for every business. “I think the most important thing about Cin7 is capturing our COGS correctly. For Graza, whose mission is to do single-origin olive oil, we’re able to capture every single lot of olive oil we purchase and every single component, including caps, labels, and bottles. They’re all in Cin7, and we know our real costs.”

For the Graza team, Cin7 is their inventory management bedrock. According to Maddie, “With Cin7, the sky’s the limit,” which is a good thing because Graza is ready to add to its olive oil success by dipping its toe into exciting new products in 2026.

“Cin7 has what we need for adding products, whether we’re buying our own components, needing to manufacture them ourselves, or managing additional inventory. Cin7 has the complexity we need to make it happen!”