Brightland Expands Product Line with 50% Cheaper Olive Oil

Aishwarya Iyer, the founder of Brightland, an olive oil brand, positioned her products as luxuries when she established the company in 2018. She categorized brands in the food and consumer packaged goods space into three tiers: good, better, and best. Most emerging brands focusing on health and wellness trends fell into the “better” category, but Iyer aimed for Brightland to be considered the “best.”

Brightland’s glass-bottled olive oils are priced at around $40 each, which has built a business in the mid-eight figures, primarily through gifting. Iyer noted that a Brightland product was gifted every minute during the previous holiday season, highlighting the brand's success in this area. Starting at the top has given Brightland more flexibility as it seeks to reach customers shopping for their own kitchens year-round. Earlier this month, the company introduced an “everyday” oil that costs half as much as its traditional product, which Iyer considers part of the “better” category of CPG. It took years—and a not-previously-reported fall 2024 Series A round, for a total of $15 million in funding—to bring this idea to market. Brightland’s California olive farmers were not large enough to produce a more mass product; eventually, Iyer found a farmer who had not previously worked with a brand and had mostly supported food service providers.

The hope is that customers who have been buying Brightland products as gifts will now turn to the brand for their own day-to-day use. Some consumers might downgrade their own purchases and start buying the cheaper product, but Iyer is excited about reaching a broader array of customers—online and across various retailers. “It opens our universe up,” she says, adding that she could see the business doubling or tripling within a few years as a result. Iyer looked to fashion for inspiration in making this transition, specifically to Ralph Lauren. “Ralph Lauren not only has Purple Label, but they also have Polo, and they’re able to do that so beautifully,” she says. “That’s who I looked at for inspiration.”

The new everyday product comes in a plastic, squeeze-top bottle. Brightland’s first squeeze-top product, a “pizza oil” introduced in 2023, drew criticism from olive oil competitor Graza, whose cofounder accused Brightland of copying its packaging. Iyer has never publicly commented on the olive oil drama but does so now: “The squeeze bottle is not novel or new. It has been used for decades in kitchens,” she says. “And if that’s the only thing that somebody has to talk about, I don’t know what to say. There are so many other things that Brightland has to talk about. And for these oils, this is just a convenient packaging format.”