By: Benyamin Davidsons
The COVID-19 pandemic had many unexpected twists. One is a tale of two friends and the surprise uptick in their online spice company.
In 2020, online sales picked up at Burlap & Barrel. The owners reasoned that the cumin seeds and paprika must be trending among youngsters who may try anything once, under the impression of TikTok or other social influences. But as the trend continued, surpassing a faze, they realized the spice orders were coming from older clients, who cook all their meals themselves, and who often lived outside of cities where specialty stores are easily accessible. “The food e-commerce revolution is being powered by a different audience than you think,” said Ori Zohar, one of the company founders. “It’s not the TikTok generation.”
Burlap & Barrel, an e-commerce spice company based in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, was founded in 2016 by Mr. Zohar and Ethan Frisch. As per a recent article in Crain’s NY, between 2019 and 2022, the company’s sales jumped eight-fold. When the pandemic first hit, the owners were worried. Half of the firm’s revenue then stemmed from wholesale sales to restaurants. So naturally, when restaurants were shuttered due to COVID-19, they feared they wouldn’t be able to stay afloat. To their elation, however, by May 2020, home cooks had placed so many orders, that it compensated for the missing wholesale orders, and even led to a jump in revenue.
The company had its humble start being hand packed out of Frisch’s Brooklyn living room. There were no outside investments made into the company, just their own money. Frisch, who had experience in foreign relations, cooking, and had many trips to Afghanistan to haul in bottles of wild-grown whole cumin seeds, would even drive to the airport to haggle with customs agents to improve the company’s shipping rates. Zohar was the company’s tech guy, with his background in startups, and having experience in Silicon Valley, where he had co-founded a mortgage technology company. In 2018, the company moved to a fulfillment center. Burlap & Barrel currently employs two co-packers, in New York and Maryland, as well as offering flexible, part-time and remote customer service and marketing jobs. The company currently boasts a larger fulfillment center in Reading, Pennsylvania.
Frisch and Zohar now spend their time traveling the world to find farmers to do business with. When the pair finds farmers who produce high-quality spices, they’re willing to pay double or sometimes even 20 times what a farmer would get on the commodity market, Frisch told Crain’s. “We have a farmer-led pricing model,” he explained.
The e-commerce company sells the spices for roughly $9 a jar, on par with prices at high-end local retailers. Cost savings for the company comes in the form of cutting out importers, distributors, and sales and placement fees. The company’s success and growing demand has allowed it to forge better relationships and the international growers. “We made a lot of promises early on” (to the farmers), Frisch said, “and to be able to make those promises come to life, to realize them and become their biggest customers, helping them grow too—that has been really satisfying.”
