DeRusha Eats: Buddy's Nut Butter
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – It started in a Twin Cities apartment in 2013. A graduate of an entrepreneur program at the University of St. Thomas was burning out his Cuisinart food processor trying to make his own peanut butter.
"I started grinding peanut butter in my little food processor in my apartment one jar at a time, bringing it to a farmer's market," Andrew Kincheloe said. "I'd make 50 to 100 jars a weekend and sell out."
That post-college dream has landed Buddy's Nut Butter in 1,000 retail locations all around the country.
"I'm a young kid. I'm energetic, I'm driven, I'm passionate," Kincheloe said.
He said he's always been passionate about food and wanted to create a peanut butter that tasted like it came from a restaurant rather than a jar.
"There was no really good flavored peanut butters that a mom could grab and say, 'This is what my kid wants and I want to feed it to them because it's a few simple ingredients,'" he said.
So, he got to work developing it.
"People would say, 'This is good! You have something.' Alright, I'm gonna make this work. I have no idea how to make this work, but I'm gonna make this work," he said.
And he did.
From selling 100 jars a weekend from his home to hundreds out of a commercial kitchen to now traveling the country trying to get in more locations, his peanut butter has been a hit.
"Now to think we're making thousands of jars, pallets, of product at a time, it's just incredible. And people that I've never met love the product. That's what really keeps me going," he said.
Buddy's has three flavors: an awesome honey peanut butter that uses Minnesota honey, a cinnamon raisin butter and a chocolate peanut butter with only five grams of sugar per serving.
"A kid wants to eat chocolate peanut butter and a mom will feed that to them if it has very little sugar in it," Kincheloe said.
Oh, and enough of this Andrew Kincheloe business. You can call Andrew, "Buddy."
"I'm Buddy," he said. "Since I was born my mom called me 'Buddy.' I was her little buddy. I'm kind of a mamma's boy; my sister would tell you that."
Now Buddy is raising money to help produce single-serve peanut butter packets called "Little Buddy's."
"They're perfect for hiking, traveling in the summer, back-to-school," he said.
He explained they can also be taken on airplanes, unlike the regular jars.
He's trying to raise $22,000 using Kickstarter in order to make a full run of the peanut butter packets. For $100 you can get three full-size jars of Buddy's, plus six boxes of "Little Buddy's" packets.
"Your contribution will help with production costs, including ingredients and packaging," he said.
Buddy's hoping to be able to pay himself a reasonable salary sometime soon, a challenge any new entrepreneur can relate to. The hardest part of starting his own business has been the financing, he said.
"Supply chain," he said. "To figure out lead times and cash flow."
For now, Buddy, and Buddy's, just keeps growing, and hustling.
"I'm the brand. I live it. I live and breathe my brand and my product every second of every day," he said.
To donate to Buddy's Kickstarter, click here. Buddy's Nut Butter can be found in Kowalski's, Lund's and Byerly's, HyVee and many Co-ops.