If you haven’t been quite as glued to your LinkedIn feed as we’ve been the past few days, let us fill you in on the olive oil feud, plus a few more recent happenings in the food industry.
Like oil and water: A LinkedIn post by Andrew Benin, co-founder and CEO of DTC olive oil brand Graza, known for its olive oil packaged in squeeze bottles, went viral when it called out “#copycat culture” when another olive oil brand, Brightland, released a Pizza Oil in a squeeze bottle. Benin said the product demonstrated “blatant disrespect,” directly tagging Brightland founder Aishwarya Iyer.
The post garnered ~130 comments, many pushing back on Benin’s claims. Some noted the longtime use of squeeze bottles in restaurant kitchens and for other food items like sriracha, while others shared their discomfort with Benin calling out a woman of color founder. Later that day, Benin edited the post and issued an apology, saying he “was heated, and reacted poorly.”
Neither Brightland nor Iyer have commented on the olive oil drama, though Iyer subsequently posted on LinkedIn and Instagram to share the Pizza Oil’s launch, noting “There's nothing else exactly like this oil out there.”
A whole thing: Whole Foods Market last week shared plans for restructuring over the next two months, per the Wall Street Journal. The company will reorganize its nine regions into six, with the intention of establishing “a more consistent number of stores per region, ” per the Whole Foods memo. The move means cutting several hundred corporate jobs, including three regional presidents.
- Changes will hit 0.5% of the company’s 105,000-person workforce. No stores will close, and no positions in stores or distribution centers will be eliminated, the memo noted.
More layoffs: Tyson Foods this week said it will cut 10% of corporate roles and 15% of leadership positions, while snack maker Utz is laying off 175 workers as it closes a manufacturing plant in Birmingham, Alabama.
ICYMI: Q1 earnings season is upon us, and lots of food and bev giants, including PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, are doing well on the back of recent price hikes.
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