There are easier things to launch than olive oil.
It is heavy. It is expensive to ship. It needs protecting from light, heat and oxygen. It belongs to a category full of traditions, terminology and opinions about the correct way to do almost everything.
So naturally, we started there.
Because olive oil is one of those ingredients that can sit in your kitchen for years without ever really being questioned.
You buy a bottle.
You put it beside the hob.
You use a little when a recipe tells you to.
You save the nicer one.
Eventually you buy another.
For something we use so often, most of us have developed remarkably few opinions about how we actually use it.
That felt worth fixing.
We did not start because the world needed another olive oil.
It doesn't.
There is already brilliant olive oil being made.
There are producers who know considerably more about olive trees than we ever will. Families who have been growing them for generations. Importers, tasters and shops doing the difficult work of getting very good oil into people's kitchens.
The problem was never that good olive oil did not exist.
It was what happened when it got home.
People were treating something fresh like something permanent.
Keeping bottles for months.
Saving the good stuff.
Pouring cautiously.
Putting it beside the hottest part of the kitchen because that happens to be where it is easiest to reach.
The more we looked at olive oil, the more we realised the interesting problem was not simply what should people buy?
It was what should people do with it once they have bought it?
Start with use.
There is an enormous amount you can learn about olive oil.
Varieties.
Harvest dates.
Acidity.
Polyphenols.
Regions.
Milling.
Tasting.
Some of that is genuinely useful.
Some of it is fascinating.
None of it should be required before you can make dinner.
We wanted to begin somewhere simpler.
Use enough.
Keep it properly.
Finish the bottle.
Know what you want the oil to do.
That became more interesting to us than adding another layer of expertise to a category that already has plenty of it.
Then came two bottles.
We kept coming back to the same distinction.
Sometimes olive oil is part of the cooking.
Sometimes olive oil is part of the finished dish.
Those are different moments.
So we made Kitchen and Table.
Kitchen is the bottle you reach for while you cook.
For roasting, frying, sauces, marinades, vegetables, eggs and the bit in the pan before anything interesting has happened yet.
Table is the bottle you want to notice.
Over tomatoes.
Into yoghurt.
Across pasta.
On soup.
With bread.
Over something you have just spent an hour cooking and something you assembled in four minutes.
You could absolutely cook with Table.
You could absolutely finish something with Kitchen.
Nobody is coming round to check.
The point of two bottles is not to create more rules.
It is to make one decision easier.
And both of them should run out.
This might be the part we care about most.
Good olive oil has somehow become something people are frightened to finish.
The special bottle gets used sparingly.
A teaspoon instead of a pour.
Only when people come over.
Then six months later it is still sitting there, except now the thing you were trying to preserve is not quite what it was.
We would rather you emptied it.
Kitchen should run out because you cooked dinner.
Table should run out because you poured it over things.
A finished bottle is evidence that it did its job.
Why call it DRZZL?
Because that is what we wanted people to do.
Not measure it nervously.
Not keep it in reserve.
Drizzle it.
Pour it.
Cook with it.
Use it often enough that buying another bottle becomes completely normal.
There is a more serious idea underneath that slightly stupid name.
Good ingredients are only useful when they get used.
Cook properly.
That line became bigger than olive oil quite quickly.
To us, cooking properly does not mean cooking perfectly.
It does not mean owning expensive equipment, knowing French techniques or spending Sunday afternoon making stock.
It means caring enough to use decent ingredients and relaxed enough to actually enjoy them.
Taste while you cook.
Use enough salt.
Use enough oil.
Feed people.
Make mistakes.
Do it again tomorrow.
Olive oil happened to be a very good place to start.
It is in almost everyone's kitchen.
It makes almost everything better.
And changing the way you use it can change dinner tonight.
So yes, there were easier things we could have launched.
But probably not a better one.
Cook properly.