All Things Butter was co-founded by myself and my best friend, chef Thomas Straker. We wanted to create an exceptional butter that could help foodies elevate their home cooking to restaurant-deliciousness, with our Unsalted, Salted and flavoured butters.
We decided to launch All Things Butter following the success of Thomas's Instagram series of the same name, where he would create innovative and exciting flavours with butter as the star of the show. The series was extremely popular, amassing over 1 billion views, and made us realise there was a real appetite for a high-quality, chef-crafted butter that can easily elevate home-cooked dishes and add some innovation to a largely undisrupted market.
Tell us about the business – what it is, what it aims to achieve, who you work with, how you reach customers and so on?
We created All Things Butter to be the ultimate convenience ingredient, not just at breakfast but for any meal of the day. Butter is the basis of most restaurant dishes and a reason why they taste so great, and so we’re on a mission to inspire and equip an army of “at home cooks” who want to take their cooking to the next level.
Our initial inspiration for the business was born from the lack of innovation we were seeing on supermarket shelves and in the dairy industry. We wanted to launch a brand that appealed more to a modern consumer versus everything else that was currently in the market. Within the mass market, we were one of the only brands to innovate and experiment with different flavoured butters when we first launched. Now we see that other brands are starting to jump on board - for example, Tesco has just launched their own flavoured butter range. And last year we released our first sweet butter - the delicious Cinnamon Bun flavour - which was the first sweet-flavoured butter on the market and then launched the category’s first chocolate butter.
We also saw the opportunity to shake up the dairy industry - not only to bring innovative flavours to consumers but to support British farmers. We have a very close relationship with our farming partners and pride ourselves as being a British brand that supports British farming. Farming is one of the toughest professions, and it is a particularly tough time in history for the industry. All Things Butter donates 1% of its revenue to RABI to support the farming sector with financial, emotional and practical help. More than just purchasing their produce, All Things Butter wants to form deeper relationships with the community and support the incredible industry at a time when they truly need it through its partnership, prioritising farmers as much as flavours.
How does All Things Butter differ from other butter brands on the market?
We are always innovating and for us, it’s so important to ensure that we are always continuing to think outside of the box and do something a bit different. So for example last year we released our first sweet butter - the delicious Cinnamon Bun flavour - which was the first sweet-flavoured butter on the market. In October we launched the category’s first chocolate butter, which was developed by All Things Butter’s farm, Brue Valley, along with Great British Bake Off Star Ruby Bhogal.
Our butter is also extremely high-quality, it is twice churned, expelling even more liquid and resulting in a butter that is richer, more creamy and delicious. All Things Butter is created using only 100% British cream, with our flavoured versions having a handful of added natural ingredients to step up your butter game.
Finally, All Things Butter is British-born, crafted by Brue Valley Farm in Glastonbury in Somerset, one of the oldest dairy farms in the country, so our customers can trust their butter is 100% British unlike many other brands who source from outside the UK.
How has the business evolved since its launch?
We launched All Things Butter in November 2023, and it was immediately well-received by consumers - in the first 10 weeks, we sold 100,000 blocks of butter.
Since then, we’ve gone from strength to strength - if you were to stack our blocks of butter, we’ve sold enough to scale Mount Everest 7.5 times! We’ve continued to innovate and disrupt the market in order to distinguish ourselves from other brands and have expanded our range to include two sweet flavours Cinnamon Bun and Chocolate.
We have some exciting new products launching later this year which will disrupt the dairy industry once again. We can’t mention anything yet - but stay tuned!
Throughout it all though, our core values have never changed. Our mission is to provide high quality, chef-crafted butter to consumers that can easily elevate their cooking and also to support British farmers by working with one of the oldest dairy farms in England (Brue Valley) and donating 1% of all profit to RABI to support farmer’s well-being.
Tell us about the working culture at All Things Butter and what is your relationship like with the farmers?
As a start up trust is key to our working culture at All Things Butter - we believe in fostering an environment where team members can rely on each other, allowing for effective delegation and collaboration. Without trust, both in team members and the overall vision of All Things Butter, growth and efficiency would be impossible. Our working culture is really important to us and we’ve built a team where everyone’s unique strengths shine where everyone contributes to our collective success.
All Things Butter is full of creative, passionate people who really believe in the brand. Everyone here really believes in our mission - to support British farmers and create exceptional butters that people love.
Our relationships with farmers is crucial to us and we work with British farmers we know the names of. All Things Butter is manufactured by Brue Valley Farm in Glastonbury in Somerset, one of the oldest dairy farms in the country.
How are you funded?
In September 2023, we secured over £530,00 of pre-seed funding and then six months post launch we closed a £2.2M seed funding round. We are currently in the process of another fundraising round - so it’s a very busy but exciting time!
What has been your biggest challenge so far and how have you overcome this?
One of the biggest challenges we, and all butter brands, faced last year was the commodity price of cream skyrocketed due to a shortage of milk from cows, which meant there was a national shortage of butter. Due to reasons outside of the farmer’s control (such as the unusually wet spring we had last year) milk yield from cows is particularly low and therefore the price of cream is at an all-time high. Thanks to our close partnership with Brue Valley, one of Britain’s oldest family-run farms, we were well-placed to deal with this challenge and continue to provide our customers with organic, British butter. However it is still a big challenge that we, and the overall dairy industry, faced, and we had to come up with innovative ways to maximise efficiency within the supply chain and mitigate that risk.
How does All Things Butter answer an unmet need?
We provided some much needed vibrancy and innovation to the dairy industry which until recently had largely remained undisrupted. We saw a huge demographic who weren't being represented in the butter offerings on the market - if you take a modern consumer who would over-index millennial and who thought of themselves as a foodie, none of the traditional brands would represent them. We wanted to create a high-quality chef-crafted butter for this demographic, those who eat out not just for convenience but to try new foods and who follow chefs on social media and TV.
Following on from Thomas Straker’s viral All Things Butter series on social media, we also saw there was a huge appetite for unique and creative flavoured butters and within the mass market, we were one of the only brands to innovate and experiment with different flavoured butters when we first launched to meet this demand from consumers.
And up until recently, British consumers primarily associate butter with breakfast, but our flavoured butters have been shifting that perception. Packed with rich flavours, our butters can enhance a wide range of dishes, whether it’s breakfast, lunch or dinner, as well as sweet or savoury snacks.
What’s in store for the future? How will All Things Butter continue to innovate and disrupt the dairy industry?
We are innovative by nature. Within the mass market, we were one of the only brands to innovate and experiment with different flavoured butters when we first launched. Since then, we pioneered sweet flavoured butters with our Cinnamon Bun flavour and last year we launched the category’s first-ever Chocolate Butter in collaboration with Ruby Bhogal.
We are working on lots of new and exciting products which will be coming soon.... all with an emphasis on natural, high quality ingredients and truly delicious flavour
What one piece of advice would you give other founders or future founders?
I think it’s important to develop the right balance of risk appetite. As an entrepreneur, you have to be able to pull the trigger on some ideas and not just say yes to everything. You have to be able to identify which ideas are worth following and which are best left.
And finally, a more personal question! What’s your daily routine and the rules you’re living by at the moment?
Life is busy, very hectic but great. I really love being part of the All Things Butter team and getting stuck in - from fundraising meetings to rebrand brainstorms. Being so busy, I always try to be present and focus on the task at hand.
Another rule I try to live by is to always be looking for new ideas, you never know when inspiration will strike.
Toby Hopkinson is the cofounder of All Things Butter.
