At A Glance

When the pandemic hit in 2020, everyone found themselves cooking at home. People found comfort in cooking, and began demanding interesting, flavorful ingredients for their recipes. That’s when Burlap & Barrel—a single-origin spice company selling primarily through its own website—started catching attention. That year, online sales grew tenfold, then nearly doubled again in 2021.

For co-founder & co-CEO Ori Zohar, though, the numbers only tell part of the story. The company’s true success lies in building real relationships with customers, sharing the rich stories behind each spice, and running Burlap & Barrel as a social enterprise with purpose at its core.

Who is Ori?‍

Meet Ori Zohar, Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Burlap & Barrel.

About Burlap & Barrel

Burlap & Barrel works directly with smallholder spice farmers around the world to source spices with unparalleled freshness and flavor to home cooks and professional chefs in the United States. Since 2016, Burlap & Barrel has brought beautiful, equitably sourced spices from small farms across the world to over 200,000 customers in the United States. Burlap & Barrel is uprooting opaque, exploitative spice supply chains and growing a more delicious, transparent, and equitable future.

Ori’s Entrepreneurial Journey

Ori’s entrepreneurial spirit emerged young and has undergone numerous iterations over the course of his career. In college, he started a cap and gown rental business and later went on to found a VC-backed fintech company in Silicon Valley. His first taste of social enterprise came in 2010, when he teamed up with his friend Ethan and launched Guerrilla Ice Cream, an ice cream cart inspired by political movements around the world. “We made delicious ice cream connected to social movements around the world and donated all of our profits to the Street Vending Project, a nonprofit street vendor advocacy group,” he remembers.

Years later, Ori reconnected with Ethan, a chef-turned-aid worker. Both passionate about food, they shared a handful of spices that Ethan had brought back with him from his international work with a few chefs. “I just watched these chefs have their minds blown by each and every one of those spices,” Ori recalls. “And that told me there’s a business here and there’s opportunity.” Ori describes the partnership as complementary - he’s the businessperson while Ethan is the spice expert. In 2016, they co-founded Burlap & Barrel.

What Excites Ori About E-Commerce?

Ori and Ethan began by selling exceptional spices— spicy and sweet Vietnamese cinnamon, peppercorns from the windy, sandy shores of Zanzibar, and cardamom from a vertically-integrated farmer in Guatemala —to chefs at Michelin-starred restaurants. When they looking into expanding into grocery stores, they quickly ran into roadblocks. “You have to convince a grocery store buyer that what you’re doing is worthwhile,” Ori explains. “And that’s typically an expensive process.” Many retail buyers were cautious, reluctant to take risks on new products in a sleepy category or demanded onerous fees to get into their stores. Instead, they decided to take control of their own distribution and built an e-commerce site. Slowly, a customer base began to grow, fueled by press coverage from major publications such as The New York Times and word of mouth from their early customers.

A major turning point came during the pandemic. “Throughout the pandemic, people were cooking at home more and rediscovering their kitchen pantries,” Ori says. In 2020, Burlap & Barrel’s online sales grew tenfold, and in 2021 they nearly doubled again from that already high base. Looking back, Ori says what stands out most from that time is the relationship they built with customers. “We could talk to them, hear what they wanted, and have this ongoing dialogue. We were building a strong e-commerce company, where customers trusted us to introduce them to new  spices—like Peruvian vanilla, naturally pollinated by bees—that they would never have found at their local grocery store.”

The Team at Burlap & Barrel 

Burlap & Barrel runs entirely remotely, with a team of 20—seven full-time and the rest part-time or contract. Many of the team members started as fans. “We realized it was a lot easier to teach someone who already loved our spices how to handle customer support,” Ori says, “than to hire someone great at support who didn’t know the difference between the cinnamons or chilies that we carry.” By embracing fractional roles, the company has tapped into a wider talent pool, connecting with skilled professionals who not only bring expertise but also share its mission.

The Customer Experience Philosophy at Burlap & Barrel

Burlap & Barrel takes a deeply personal approach to customer experience, seeing every shopper as a person, not a data point. “We’re more qualitative than quantitative,” Ori explains. “We learn so much more that way. There’s more depth, more nuance, more interesting details when we really dig in with individual customers, instead of just staring at a dashboard showing how people move through the site in aggregate.”

Going the Extra Mile for Customers

As Burlap & Barrel grew, Ori was determined to keep it feeling like a neighborhood spice shop, not an “anonymous e-commerce machine.” That meant paying close attention to orders and building real relationships with customers. Recently, he learned that a long-time customer was facing a health issue that restricted what they could eat. “I asked, ‘What can you have?’” Ori recalls. “Then I put together a custom package with ingredients that fit her dietary needs and supported her health.” It’s just one of many stories of the company going the extra mile to make sure every customer feels seen and cared for.

Business Growth and Revenue Strategies

Customer Support and Driving Revenue

“Instead of seeing customer support as a cost center, we see it as a revenue driver,” Ori says. By paying attention to what customers were asking for, Burlap & Barrel has improved its website and expanded its product line. One memorable request was for a “one of everything” package—a concept Ori admits he’d never have thought of himself. The team ran with it, creating a complete collection, with the largest set priced at $600. “We sell more than $75,000 worth of those collections every year,” he says. “It’s wild—and it only happened because we listened to our customers.”

Balancing Revenue and Drawing Profits 

“It was important for us to be an independent social enterpriese, so we bootstrapped the company. That meant we had to be profitable from the start,” Ori says. “It forced us to be more thoughtful—and it instilled real discipline in how we spent our money.” In the early days, that lean approach meant no salaries for Ori or his co-founder Ethan. They doubled as customs brokers and freight forwarders, flying out to meet farmers and returning home with spices packed into checked duffel bags. As the business grew, they began reinvesting—buying more spices, hiring their first team members, and laying the foundation for the company Burlap & Barrel would become.

How Valuing Your Business Strengthens Customer Experience

Pricing correctly is critical for any business. In in their first year, the duo realized they were underpricing their products. Burlap & Barrel wasn’t competing with deeply discounted, low quality spices. Rather, they were creating a premium product with equitable payments to partner farmers and white glove treatment for their digital customers.

In terms of customer experience, the new pricing gave the company flexibility: replacing a spice a customer didn’t love, covering the cost of a lost or stolen order, and still staying profitable. “It also taught us to never chase revenue at a loss,” Ori adds. “Our strong eCommerce business has given us the flexibility to turn down big retailer deals that would wipe out our margins—we have a direct relationship with our customers, just like we do with our partner farmers.”

The Role of Customer Retention at Burlap & Barrel

Burlap & Barrel focuses on retaining the customers they already have over chasing new ones. “It’s so much easier to get an existing customer to place their next order than it is to get a stranger off the street to pay attention and learn about your company,” Ori says. Their high-touch, personal approach makes people eager to share their experiences.

Recently, the company ran a week-long “tariff sale,” inviting customers to spread the word to friends during their first-ever site-wide sale. The result? Burlap & Barrel recorded its second- and third-biggest sales days ever. “People underestimate how much your customers are willing to go to bat for you,” Ori says. “They underestimate how much customers want to hear about your business—and want to be part of it.”

Topics of Interest

Future Goals: Spice Blends for the Everyday Cook

Having won over skilled home chefs, Burlap & Barrel is now setting its sights on a different audience: the casual home cook, who just wants to throw together a flavorful dinner. Two years ago, the company introduced a line of “Origin Blends,” iconic spice blends all grown and blended at origin according to their partner farmers’ traditional recipes —think Herbs de Provence, Vietnamese Five Spice, and a fragrant Zanzibar mix. Their origin blends quickly became best-sellers, and they’re regularly expanding the line.

They’re also exploring beloved American blend. “We’re putting a lineup of classic American blends like steak seasoning, a barbecue seasoning, a lemon pepper, and a pumpkin spice,” Ori says. It’s a move designed to make their exceptional spices more accessible, without sacrificing the quality that built their reputation.

Ori’s Advice for Aspiring E-Commerce Entrepreneurs

For Ori, launching a new product in the e-commerce world starts with a simple rule: talk to your customers—and listen. “Ask questions. Email every single one of your customers,” he says. “They’ll be thrilled to hear from a company founder. They’ll be happy to give feedback. And even if it’s bad feedback, you’d rather hear it directly from them, and have a shot at winning them over, rather than customers leaving a negative review.”

That input, he says, should guide your decisions. “Use their advice and information to shape what you do. You’ll know you’ve nailed it when suddenly you can’t keep your product on the shelf.”