Meet Ori Zohar | Entrepreneur

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ori Zohar and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ori, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I’d always had entrepreneurial projects throughout my life – from using a 3-CD boombox to (poorly) DJ parties when I was a teenager to a graduation cap and gown business when I was in college to a venture-backed financial services company that made the process of getting your mortgage simpler, lower cost, and fair.

I honed my skills as an entrepreneur with each project. I think of it like I’m working out my entrepreneurship muscles. Sure, each of these businesses is in a totally different area, but I got better at running a business with each one. I got better at working with limited resources, getting to know my customers, and switching my focus based on what the business needed that day.

We know that most startups fail, but why do we still do it knowing that the odds are stacked against us? I do it because the work is interesting, meaningful, and because I get better at it every single day.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Burlap & Barrel sources unique, beautiful spices for professional chefs and home cooks. As a Public Benefit Corporation, we partner directly with smallholder farmers to source spices that have never been available in the US before and help improve the livelihoods of our partner farmers.

When you start the business, everyone wanted to give you their two cents. We sought out experienced entrepreneurs and subject matter experts for advice on how to build our business, but none of it felt right. We ended up making two counter-intuitive decisions that saved our business.

All of the experts we spoke with told us to focus on sourcing spices from only one country since anything else would be too logistically complicated for a 2-person bootstrapped company. We intuitively felt that our site needed to represent spices and farmers from around the world to make for a better shopping experience. Sure, it was more complicated, but we found that our partner farmers in each country were impressive entrepreneurs capable of working with us towards making it happen. And our customers loved it.

The second piece of advice was to focus our business on either selling to home cooks or professional cooks. The experts assured us that we couldn’t serve both audiences well. We decided that we’d say yes to anyone who wants our spices. So we ended up with four lines of business: bulk, food service, grocery, and eCommerce. We started primarily selling to restaurants when we launched the business in late 2016, and they made up the majority of our sales going into 2020. Then the pandemic hit, and our restaurant sales disappeared almost overnight. Luckily, we’d been working on our eCommerce for over 3 years at that point and watched as our daily orders grew by 10x, leading the entire business to grow significantly in 2020. If we had only invested in serving restaurants, we’d be out of business today. Instead, we were ready for the swing and even able to help many other early-stage food entrepreneurs figure out how to sell food online.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I’m based in Clinton Hill in Brooklyn, NY and it’s an absolutely magical neighborhood. If you’re visiting during the summer, keep your eyes peeled for the weekend block parties where the streets get filled with minivan-sized smokers and grills, DJs pumping out the beats, kids playing soccer, and everyone from the neighborhood coming out.

You can’t go wrong with getting fresh pasta from LaRina Pastificio & Vino and washing it down with a slice of pie from Petee’s Café. Speedy Romeo is the best spot for pizza, plus you’re just a short walk from Izzy Rose for cocktails or Mekelburg’s to choose from 16 or so beers on tap.

Oh and on Saturday, check out the Fort Greene farmer’s market on the eastern edge of Fort Greene Park. If you’re like me, you’ll pick up veggies at S&SO Produce Farms, a loaf of toasted sesame wheat bread from She Wolf, any dairy products from Ronnybrook (oh and try their cheeses!), and hearts, gizzards or whatever chicken parts you can get from Yellow Bell Farm.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Shoutout to the many social entrepreneurs that came before us, who paved the way by building thriving businesses based on purpose, community, and social equity. Businesses like Patagonia, Equal Exchange, Dr. Bronner’s, Zingerman’s, and too many others to list.

Website: https://www.burlapandbarrel.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/burlapandbarrel/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1575414682532699/