Butter is without doubt one of the most versatile components on the market; you need to use it to baste steak, bake cookies, as a bread unfold, and even as a service for seasonings to flavour your meals. To raise the common-or-garden fats, ButterBae.Co (ButterBae) makes kombu (edible kelp) butter, a bougie butter that’s blended with kombu marinated in seasonings like shoyu, dashi, and even caviar, for example.

On the way it may very well be used, its founder Samantha really useful, “On bread, thick layers on crackers, tossing them onto steamed veggies, on prime of grilled seafood and meats, including it into your favorite pasta sauce, or as a completion to your heat bowl of soup.” 

She added that prospects have additionally roasted rooster and beef Wellington with their caviar butters to recreate wonderful eating dishes at residence.

A True Blue Foodie

The creator of ButterBae is a homemaker in Penang and self-proclaimed true blue foodie who lives to eat. It was solely throughout the MCO that her inside chef was rekindled, realising that different foodies like her have been aching for wonderful eating experiences once more. This was additionally coupled with the rise in Malaysians baking bread at residence throughout the lockdown. 

“I assumed it might be fascinating to start out a product line of butters to be loved (as a diffusion) with home-baked sourdough as I observed that many gifted bakers have additionally come forth post-MCO,” she recounted. 

Studying to make the butters was a private journey, Samantha shared. She adopted movies and recipes on-line to choose up the talents of constructing primary kombu butter. “I recognised the wholesome properties of kelp normally, but additionally that it lent a fragile burst of umami to butter and meals,” she defined. 

After getting the cling of it, she started experimenting together with her personal flavours, growing recipes to supply variations like caviar, truffle, and truffle bacon butters. Furthermore, she additionally makes vegan butters to cater to that market phase that will not have many selections round.

After numerous trials and errors, she started distributing samples amongst her buddies, who then urged her to start out promoting the merchandise. Thus, ButterBae was launched in August 2020.

Who’s Consuming This Bougie Butter?

“We consider our butters are for everybody actually, we’ve many little followers in addition to aged who take pleasure in it, in addition to foodies,” Samantha replied to Vulcan Put up.

Usually utilized in connoisseur cooking, Entier French Eating was really one of many first Malaysian companies to bottle up the umami butter throughout the MCO. The eatery sells their kombu butters at RM60 for 3 jars containing 80g every.

As for ButterBae’s spreads, a 100g jar can price between RM18 for Authentic Kombu Butter to RM38 for Truffle Caviar. Different variants embrace Truffle Bacon (RM 23), Miso Kombu Butter (RM19), and Vegan Kombu Unfold (RM18), to call just a few.

When ButterBae first launched, they have been typically in comparison with the restaurant, which aided in educating the general public about such a product. On the draw back, it uncovered Samantha to competitors. 

“We at all times tried to advise our prospects to have an open thoughts while attempting our merchandise,” she stated. To protect her place available in the market, Samantha tries to keep up her butters’ consistency by making them in small batches. Sadly, that results in different issues.

It’s Like Delivery The COVID-19 Vaccines

Amongst different challenges that adopted from promoting such a product was convincing prospects to even purchase the butters within the first place, given their shelf lifetime of only one month. Furthermore, prospects are suggested in opposition to stocking up, because the product’s high quality will deteriorate if saved for too lengthy.

So, Samantha has to patiently clarify that the butters are made with out preservatives and stabilisers, which tends to assist prospects achieve confidence within the unfold.

However that’s not all. As phrase unfold, patrons from KL gained curiosity too, which introduced Samantha with a brand new downside: delivery. Promoting refrigeration-reliant merchandise requires chilly vans to ship them interstate, which isn’t low cost. 

For instance, orders of as much as 3kg by way of couriers from Butterworth to KL will price about RM30. Inside Penang, it might solely be about RM12. Thus, for interstate prospects, it might make sense to group purchase, the place communities can consolidate their orders and cut up the supply prices.

That was an issue Samantha confronted throughout lockdowns when interstate travels have been banned. When it wasn’t, she personally made the journeys to KL herself on a month-to-month foundation with the butters in an ice cooler, and acquired her prospects to choose up or Lalamove the merchandise from a central location.

To me, this doesn’t sound like a sustainable method to deal with logistics for a enterprise hoping to develop. However ought to Samantha’s plans work as supposed, she would ultimately safe supply companions and stockists that may cut back these delivery and journey prices to make the merchandise extra accessible for purchasers.

For now, nevertheless, her strategies appear to be working. With loyal prospects restocking her butters each time they’ve emptied a jar, ButterBae has offered 2,080 jars as of the top of March 2021.

• You possibly can be taught extra about ButterBae.Co right here.
• You possibly can examine extra startups we’ve lined right here.

Featured Picture Credit score: Samantha, founding father of ButterBae.Co