Today we’d like to introduce you to Jared Talla.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Jared. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I have been obsessed with peanut butter for as long as I can remember, and I developed a passion for healthy eating when I was in high school training for baseball. For some time now, I have loved discovering the latest and greatest natural food products in the aisles of Whole Foods. Once the almond butter craze hit, I started trying all the different almond butters out there, and then eventually cashew and other nut butters. I was on a mission to find my favorite one because I was eating it so much, however, I kept coming up short. They were either too plain or had other ingredients like sugar, erythritol, palm oil, and countless others that I just didn’t agree with. So. a couple of years ago, I bought a food processor and started making my own butters in my kitchen, throwing in all kinds of unique nuts and ingredients that weren’t out on the market. The underlying rule: all organic and no sugar. I loved my product and after several months of giving it away to friends, I decided it would be a fun passion project to sell it at the Sunday Farmers Market at Melrose Place. Much to my surprise, people actually liked it. They kept coming back and even bringing their friends. It was super flattering and very encouraging that I left my job to focus on this butter business full time. It’s been a fun ride since the first market on January 24th, 2019.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The road of life is anything but smooth, but it is an amazing one, hah. When starting out, I had no idea how many licenses I needed just to sell this little food product that I make in my kitchen. The biggest delay was submitting all the paperwork to various government departments and waiting for their responses. I needed a Cottage Food Operation license from the city health department to legally make a food product in my kitchen, and then I needed a business license, sellers permit, articles of incorporation, employer ID number, and a temporary event permit just to sell at the farmers market. That wasn’t too hard, just a waiting game. And then, came the exciting part — what do I call this business? What’s my logo? What do the labels look like? What about a website? After a few months of being in business, I started to reach out to local retailers to stock my butters on their shelves. That came with a whole other set of challenges, as the sales process takes patience, persistence, and having a good product. Same concept with selling online, a part of the business I am focusing on more at the moment. Basically, this year has taught me that there are so many factors that go into building a successful business: product, sales, marketing, branding, PR, luck, timing, perseverance, and a whole lot more that I haven’t even learned yet. It is tremendously humbling and a lot of fun because I really can’t imagine myself doing anything else.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Butterfly Superfoods – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of and what sets you apart from others.
Butterfly Superfoods makes an organic nut butter blend that has walnuts, macadamia nuts, cashews, and MCT oil. We offer four flavors: cinnamon vanilla, chocolate reishi, classic, and rosemary. They are all sugar-free, gluten-free, vegan, raw, paleo, and keto (all of the buzz words). I’d say our specialty is taking something delicious that you’d normally expect to have sugar and then being pleasantly surprised to find no sugar and nothing bad in it whatsoever. Every ingredient truly has a nutritional benefit for you. In addition to that, what also sets us apart is the fact that we combine three super high-quality nuts with MCT oil, whereas most of our competitors use only one nut. As a company, I am proud of what we have accomplished thus far. We make these nut butters to improve people’s lives so when fans come up to me at the markets and say they will never eat another nut butter again, that’s the biggest win for me.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
In the future, we plan to expand our line of nut butters with even more flavors and move into different categories with the underlying theme — super delicious snacks where every ingredient has a nutritional benefit for you. We will keep working hard to get into major retailers across the country, as well as making it easy and affordable for our community to purchase on our website. I am really excited by the whole industry and today’s consumers that are more informed and demand better quality from traditional food establishments.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.butterflysuperfoods.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/butterflysuperfood
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