They didn’t start off as your typical spice merchants, only travelers who wanted more space for edible souvenirs. Or at least that’s how Ethan Frisch convinced Ori Zohar, his business partner and eventual co-founder of Burlap & Barrel, to join him on one of their early trips together.
“Ethan just wanted more luggage capacity,” Zohar said, laughing. “That’s how we were bringing spices in, this suitcase importing.”
The idea for the spice importer company began in the homes of farmers all over the world, where they forged bonds over food. These relationships stay strong through a social enterprise model. Farmers get to call more of the shots than they usually do in this kind of set-up: they set the prices, get more agency over what they grow and how they grow it, and make more money.
Spices and solidarity
Burlap & Barrel has the deck stacked against them when their competitors are big companies with big relationships at grocery stores, Zohar says. But there’s pride in having built a spice company — which started in a one-bedroom apartment in Jackson Heights — largely outside of grocery stores so far.
“That is really a wild thing to be able to do, but it’s because of how good the spices are, and it’s how special the farmers are,” he said.
Before we rewind to their origin story, Epicenter also wants to note a connection to this business: We regularly include Burlap & Barrel spices in our holiday gifts to clients and supporters, and mention its line of Floyd Cardoz Masalas in our gift roundups.
Cardoz, a celebrity chef and pioneer in Indian cuisine, died of Covid; in December 2021, we wrote: “…we had literally hundreds of volunteers who helped Epicenter-NYC book New Yorkers for their vaccines over this past year. They have been busy once again in this latest resurgence of Covid-19, helping neighbors navigate testing, boosters or pediatric vaccines. We gifted the staff and our volunteers Floyd’s spices, to thank them … and to remember all we’ve lost.”
Origins in guerrilla ice cream
Neither of Burlap & Barrel’s co-founders came from the spice industry. They met in 2010 through mutual friends, when Zohar was working in advertising and Frisch as a line cook and pastry chef.
They had already been entrepreneurs in other ways: Zohar had experimented with business ventures since high school, and Frisch had experience in hospitality and kitchens. And he was already exploring the intersection of food, culture and justice as a social entrepreneur.
Their different backgrounds in branding and fine dining clicked when they launched a guerrilla-themed ice cream cart in the city. Inspired by global revolutions and Zohar’s advertising instincts, Guerrilla Ice Cream blended political storytelling with culinary creativity: each ice cream flavor reflected a historical movement, complete with custom toppings and blow-torched bananas.
“‘These are guerrillas,’” Frisch recalls Zohar’s advertising brain saying. “‘You move around, you ambush’ — you do things.” So they borrowed a cart from the Street Vendor Project, where Frisch volunteered at the time, and where they largely donated 100% of their profits. The pair drew long lines at food fairs with inventive flavors like a port wine and dark chocolate combo, a flavor inspired by West African anti-Portuguese revolutions led by an agronomist.
Lessons from the ice cream business
While the cart was short-lived — “Ice cream is the worst product to build a food business around because it melts,” said Frisch, who spent the summer making all the ice cream in a small, dimly lit kitchen in his off hours — it taught them key lessons they would later apply to Burlap & Barrel. For one, even with a good business idea and a lot of good press, sustainability is all about the product.
These lessons simmered as Frisch went off to graduate school and Zohar to the dentist to fix his cavities (a casualty of the ice cream business, he said). They kept in touch beyond talking about their next business together: Frisch would pop back up with all these incredible spices and farmers that he had met, and Zohar watched chefs “lose their minds” as they were trying to buy it, Zohar said.
The trip that launched a business
Zohar and Frisch’s first major trip together led to one of the company’s key relationships, with a cinnamon farmer in central Vietnam. After three weeks crisscrossing the country, they stumbled onto an open garage where folks were shaving off the outer bark off thick cinnamon bark pieces. Zohar and Frisch ended up hanging out with the owners of the farm.
“They said, ‘You don’t want the pure stuff. It’s too expensive. It’s not good,’” Zohar said. “And we’re like, ‘Try us.’”
The two New Yorkers proceeded to strike a handshake deal to buy a thousand kilograms of cinnamon. They didn’t know whether they would be able to sell it or if the farm owners would disappear on them. “I’m sure they had some of the same reservations of, ‘who are these strangers… asking us to buy our best cinnamon?’ ” Zohar said. That cinnamon became Royal Cinnamon, now their No. 1 bestseller from Vietnam.
A living spice warehouse
That’s the kind of dynamic at the core of Burlap & Barrel’s work. “People get surprised when they hear that we don’t have any contracts with any farmers,” he said. “This is such a relationship business… these kinds of relationships only happen in person.”
They officially launched the business in 2016. With their quality spices, some of their first customers were chefs from professional kitchens. However, their operations were scrappy at first, operating out of Frisch’s one-bedroom apartment in Jackson Heights for nearly the first two years.
“I turned my living room into a spice warehouse,” Frisch said. “We had over a metric ton of spices … at that point. You’d smell it from the elevator.”
Their parents asked them when they’d get a “real job.” But when early retail customers started choosing them over familiar legacy companies, they knew their product and approach was resonating.
Slaying the chicken, growing the business
Traveling to source spices has brought the co-founders into unexpected, often intimate moments of culinary culture.
In Vietnam, a dinner began with the ritual slaughter of a chicken. Frisch took on the task while Zohar politely excused himself to another room. The payoff was a peppercorn soup made from green peppercorns harvested minutes before. For Zohar, the chance to cook with fresh, undried spices with the farmers was unforgettable.
In Guatemala, they hiked through dense cloud forest to reach a cardamom farmer. The steep, humid terrain — which was ideal for the crop — required machete-wielding guides to clear the way.
The reward was a taste of cardamom pods fresh off the vine: minty, fruity, and unlike anything found on a supermarket shelf. The farmer capped the visit by slicing sugarcane with a machete and offering it to his guests after the long trek.
Stewards, not just suppliers
Sourcing new partners is part research, part instinct, and part luck. Many farmers reach out via social media or online forums. The co-founders then travel to meet them in person.
During the pandemic, that pipeline grew unexpectedly. As adult children returned to family farms and helped their parents get online, many discovered Burlap & Barrel’s mission. That’s how they connected with cinnamon growers in Sri Lanka: through a next-generation farmer who saw a better way forward.
The right partners are those willing to buck convention. “We’re asking them to do something different than typical,” Zohar said, from harvesting practices to post-harvest processing. And not everyone is ready, but when it works, it’s transformative, he says.
One farmer in Hungary, who supplies their paprika, identifies more as a soil steward than a chili grower. After years of nurturing the land, he proudly led them into the field to dig into the deep, healthy soil — the real source of flavor and sustainability.
Trust and turmeric
Burlap & Barrel’s model only works if both sides play fair. Either party could cut corners, but long-term success relies on mutual trust and shared values.
One farmer in southern India really shows up this way. Surrounded by conventional farms, he remains committed to traditional, rain-fed agriculture, with no chemical herbicides or shortcuts. “He has a real sort of religious spiritual philosophy behind his product,” Frisch said.
However, for a long time, the farmer’s neighbors had laughed at what they saw as his foolish methods. After all, it’s a lot more work and expensive to produce turmeric that way, though their crops aren’t as good. When Burlap & Barrel met the turmeric farmer in early 2020, he was ecstatic to show the proof in this new partnership with folks who understood his approach.
“He literally marched us down the main street of the town and [was] like, ‘these are the guys who they’ve been buying from me!’” Frisch said.
In Zanzibar, the cooperative they work with has brought on new farmers. In Grenada, schoolchildren tour the farms to learn about the island’s nutmeg legacy. It was important that Burlap & Barrel not just be about sourcing spices, but also helping preserve agricultural traditions.
Scaling without selling out
While many food startups chase rapid expansion and outside investment, Burlap & Barrel has opted for slower, deliberate growth: profitable and self-funded. This approach runs counter to the grow-at-all-costs ethos of Zohar’s former life in venture-backed startups.
“We got to build what people call an old-school business,” Zohar said, and not just because it’s one of the oldest industries in the world, “but also because we’re building it based off of what we can afford and we get to make commitments to farmers and pay them upfront and do all these other things that… leads to way better spices than than people have gotten before.”
They’ve also pushed farmers to do better for themselves. Just one example: farmers they work with are now doing spice blends based on their own ingredients and their own recipes. This translates to more money than from single spices.
Not chasing Gen Z
The co-founders have also tapped into a different customer base than many businesses in others’ frenzy to target Gen Z and other young generations. Burlap & Barrel’s best customers are consistently women in their 50s, 60s and older, who like to cook three meals a day.
“They were the ones that were saying, ‘oh my God, this ingredient that I’ve been looking for that I can’t find anywhere else, yes, please send it to me by mail from a company that I have never heard of!’ ” Zohar said. “We found this really wonderful group of mostly ladies that were really big fans and really couldn’t wait for the next thing that we’d come out with.”
So the co-founders would take their time to chat with these customers and make the site easy for them to navigate. This deliberate pace also shapes everything from logistics to communication with farmers. The company makes large down payments at the start of each harvest season and keeps in close touch with farmers through WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.
Tariffs and tenacity
Still, global trade isn’t getting easier. President Trump’s tariff shifts — including higher tariffs on nearly all major U.S. trading partners — have piled onto the pressures of post-pandemic disruptions and soaring supply costs small farmers and importers were facing.
Many common spices, like cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, black pepper and cloves, don’t grow in the U.S. They need a tropical climate and other specific conditions. So putting tariffs on agricultural products such as spices that don’t have a domestic market only makes them more expensive and less available, Frisch says.
To cut costs amid tariffs, they need to spend less money domestically. They’re going to ship cheaper, pull back on some of their domestic research and development, and slow down some of their chef collaborations.
“The tariffs are having this opposite effect as far as our business is concerned and it’s not doing anything that’s benefiting the American consumer,” Frisch said. “So we’ve been surprised by it and communicating with our customers, saying, “’hey, you want to support small businesses that are doing things the right way?’ ”
When Trump first implemented his tariff policy, the company did a “tariff sale” — and people really showed up. They were two of their biggest days of sales in the history of Burlap & Barrel.
Smaller is sometimes better
Still, navigating changing rules, duties and shipping bottlenecks is now part of the job. It’s yet another reason their tight-knit supply chain and direct relationships matter more than ever.
Small businesses typically don’t have big bank relationships. But because they’re not beholden to these agreements, they’re able to be a lot more nimble, he says. Post-pandemic, when consumer behavior changed in a big way — people spending more time experimenting in their kitchens and ordering spices online — Burlap & Barrel was able to meet the moment.
And we were rewarded by cooks across America, saying, ‘Beautiful, great, I love it. What else can I get from you?’” Zohar said.
Burlap & Barrel is turning 10 years old next year — and so are many relationships with both farmers and customers.
“It’s because of how we’ve communicated with our customers and brought unique and interesting things — from dried kimchi to super rare vanillas to really the best cinnamon you’ll ever try in your life,” Zohar said. “We’ve had a lot of fun with it and people have really connected to that.”
Burlap & Barrel
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