The brand behind those viral olive oil squeeze bottles is entering the mayo wars

You know Graza—or, at least, you’ve probably seen its squeeze bottles of extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO) on grocery store shelves. They’re green, opaque to protect the contents, and sold in two variations: Sizzle, for cooking, and Drizzle, for finishing. 

Since the brand launched its direct-to-consumer site in 2021, it’s become a staple of the olive oil aisle. With national distribution across stores like Whole Foods, Kroger, and Costco, its squeeze bottles (sometimes accompanied by its beer-can refills) are sold in more than 28,000 stores. It has also been making small excursions into other parts of the store, with Ithaca using Graza oil for a co-branded hummus. 

But now Graza is planting its flag in the condiment aisle with three new mayonnaise variants: Original, Fancy, and Garlic Aioli—all of which are available in plastic squeeze bottles and glass jars. It started rolling out to Whole Foods locations and other retailers in January.

Though company cofounder and CEO Andrew Benin acknowledges that “in some situations, you shouldn’t reinvent the wheel,” Graza still wanted to make its mark.

Its mayo is the first commercial mayonnaise made with 100% unrefined oils, and he said he wanted the Garlic Aioli to taste “like your Spanish mother-in-law’s aioli.” (Considering Benin has a Spanish mother-in-law, he’s a relatively trustworthy source on that one.)

As when Graza broke into the olive oil category, its launch of a mayo amid booming demand for condiments will be an uphill battle for the company. But Benin relishes the opportunity to make his mark—again.

“Olive oil was exciting to us because there’s so much longevity to it—we’re a part of a really big whole with a lot of history,” he says. “We feel the same way about mayonnaise.”

Mayo the Graza way

Because of the popularity of its original two olive oils, last year Graza introduced a high-heat variant made of pomace oil (the pulp remnants of an EVOO pressing). “We had a lot of pressure to expand,” Benin says, adding that he was slow to settle on an expansion because things like vinegar or salt “weren’t actually connected to olive oil.” 

That’s where mayo—which is made of up to 65% oil—felt like a natural way to use its existing product in a new way. Graza’s classic mayo uses a combination of its EVOO and pomace oil, while Fancy and Garlic varieties use 100% EVOO. For each iteration of the products, Benin says Graza got input from condiment experts and Graza employees. 

Each new version was set up in the kitchen of Graza’s Domino Park office in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, with a sheet of paper for notes and a pile of spoons (plus a bowl for the dirty ones).

“If you think about all the small adjustments we made, all the formulas, I think we tasted mayo over 20,000 times in this office,” Benin says. “A lot of mayo, a lot of full bellies being, like, ‘I don’t want lunch because I think I just had mayo for lunch.’”

Though the products satisfied Graza employees, they now have to cut the mustard with consumers who are currently inundated with condiments, especially mayo.

The condiment craze

Graza’s mayo faces competition that includes not just legacy giants like Kraft and Unilever’s Best Foods and Hellmann’s, but also a growing slate of celeb-backed products. Last year, actor Glen Powell launched his Walmart condiment line Smash Kitchen, which features an organic mayo. And chef-influencer Molly Baz’s brand Ayoh Mayo—with retro-inspired branding that rivals Graza’s in its distinctiveness—rolled out nationwide at Target in January, after having launched online in 2024.

The surge in brands is responding to a larger boom in consumer demand, according to Claire Dinhut, a former TV producer and an author whose Instagram @condimentclaire focuses on sauces. She says the “Mayo-sance” got its start during the early days of the pandemic. 

“Especially during lockdown, people’s outing of the day was going to the grocery store,” Dinhut says, adding that people were looking for simple ways to spice up their home cooking. That was beneficial to the condiments retail market. In 2020, McCormick—a global sauce manufacturer of staples like Frank’s RedHot, Cholula, and French’s mustard—saw a 5% rise in sales over the previous year, driven by growth in consumer purchases.

Since then, demand hasn’t slowed down, and neither has growth. The global condiments market is projected to grow from $106.37 billion in 2026 to $176.53 billion by 2034. The U.S. market alone is projected to reach $32.84 billion by 2032. 

The prospect of Graza shaving off even a little bit of the mayo giants’ sales means big money, and the brand is benefitting from a swing in consumer sentiment from “mayo hate” in the 2010s to a renewed ardor.

“It was apparently cool to hate mayo for some reason,” Dinhut says. “But I think the same thing has happened with butter. It’s anything that maybe has a little bit more fat content or is a little bit heartier—people have preconceived notions about them, and it’s cool to not like that thing.”

But now, the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement—and broad consumer interest in less processed products (whole milk and all)—could help Graza pull in customers from its more processed rivals. 

“So many brands are coming out with condiments, and I think they’re a really easy way to make that brand’s taste resonate through other people’s dishes and cooking,” Dinhut says. “I think it’s really smart from a brand perspective.”

Playing to its strength

Though Graza’s mayo comes with claims of being unrefined, its success will also rely on its recognizable packaging and branding. CEO Benin hopes that using its recognizable brand will help do with mayo what it did for oil. 

“We’ve been trying to get more people to understand that Graza is much more about what’s inside its packaging than the outside,” he says.

Graza’s mayonnaise packaging sticks true to the OG bright and playful style, reminiscent of its olive oil. The containers feature a joyful olive and egg duo (or a smiling garlic bulb on the aioli package). The labels feature an illustrated olive, and the lids of its glass jars have a repeating olive and vine motif.  

For as much as Benin doesn’t want Graza to be known simply for its packaging innovation, the company’s branding is one of its strongest assets. With the mayo, as with the olive oil, its packaging is something of a Trojan horse to get people to look at it, and then to try it. He knows he probably won’t convert the most fervent mayonnaise haters, but he’s hoping to intrigue mayo apologists enough to try Graza’s version. 

“We get excited when there’s this big pool that we can plug into and say, ‘How are we going to make it better? How are we going to stand out? Where can we do things the Graza way?’” Benin says.

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