With more pressing concerns at hand, olive oil drama stirs on LinkedIn

If you’re an aglio e olio fan or have a soft spot for, uh, bottle design, this story may make you sizzle in your seat.

Data from the International Monetary Fund shows the global price per metric ton of olive oil closing in on $6k, its highest point since 1997.

To blame? In part, high temps and drought squeezing supply throughout the western Mediterranean, per Quartz.

• Spain, which usually pumps out 1m+ tons annually, has been hit particularly hard, with last year’s yield down 50%.
• Production in Italy, which had its worst drought in decades in 2022, is down ~37% this year.

Thankfully, it’s not all a pit of despair: Production in Greece is looking up and nearly doubled in Turkey in 2022, with exports on track to triple in 2023.

A pour decision?

The CEO of olive-oil-in-squeeze-bottle startup Graza recently went viral for a LinkedIn post calling out a “copycat” product: an oil meant for pizza that… also uses a squeeze bottle.

The post caused quite the stir in the comments section. “With all due respect, you did not create the squeeze bottle,” the founder of Haven’s Kitchen noted.

Hours later, Graza’s CEO returned with an apology, bringing to an end what will hopefully be enough olive oil startup drama to last us for the next 100 years.

Oil be damned! All this comes as Italy’s government conducts crisis talks over Italian pasta prices, which were up 16.5% YoY in April, more than 2x the country’s broader inflation rate.