Butler business makes peanut butter fun
It comes in as pallets of honey-roasted peanuts. It goes out — all over the world — as peanut butter, but with a tasty twist. Udderly Nuts, an unusual small-town business located on the courthouse square in Butler, creates specialty peanut butter the owners call “the ultimate spoonable treat.”
The family business is the brainchild of Stephen and Talia Miller, who launched Udderly Nuts in the basement of their home three years ago. These days their downtown Butler location is piled high with pallets of USA-grown honey-roasted peanuts. “We put that through grinders and grind it into our own peanut butter,” Stephen says. “And then we add white chocolate or milk chocolate or dark chocolate to create a flavored base.”
That’s where the fun starts. To the peanut butter bases they will add all kinds of flavors to turn boring peanut butter into a gourmet treat. The treats are all made by hand, four jars at a time, with the toppings blended throughout. Sometimes extra ingredients are piled on top.
“It’s very different,” Stephen says, comparing their product to regular peanut butter. “Whenever we have new customers who aren’t familiar with our business locally, nine times out of 10 they think it’s awesome. There’s always someone who’s like, ‘I thought this would be regular peanut butter I can spread on bread.’ It’s not. It’s more like a cookie-dough product.”
While their gourmet offerings will vary by the season, there’s always more than 20 different flavors available at the store or online.
The best seller — to Stephen’s chagrin — is called Happy Camper. Picture a jar of s’mores made with a milk chocolate base to which marshmallow fluff and Golden Grahams cereal is added.
“It’s not my favorite at all,” Stephen admits. “It was a seasonal release that we sent away and brought back and sent away. But when we brought it back this last time, I made the stupidest TikTok video. And it’s up to 1.3 million views. So now I can’t get rid of it.”
Another of the family’s greatest hits is Raspberry Cheesecake. “I’ve not met many people who don’t like Raspberry Cheesecake,” Stephen says. “It kind of has the peanut butter and jelly vibe to it because it’s got a raspberry sauce in it. That combined with the peanut butter gives it a Goober-type flavor.”
Rounding out the top three is Super Cookie. This one starts with a butterscotch base, then Oreos and Chips Ahoy! cookie pieces, M&M’s and chocolate chips are added. “It was one of our original flavors,” Stephen says.
Other favorites are Fluffy Bunny, a simple flavor with just marshmallow fluff added; and Turtlicious, made with a milk chocolate base swirled with caramel sauce and roasted pecans. “Cookies and Cream is another original flavor that has lost its luster a bit because it’s not quite as cool as some of the new flavors with four, five or six things,” Stephen says. “It’s a white chocolate base with Oreo cookie in it. It’s probably my all-time favorite. Every time I try it, I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s the one.’ ”
The creative couple really has fun during holidays. For Halloween, they offered Fright Night dirt cups loaded with gummy worms and cookie crumbs for dirt. At Christmas they sold Peppermint Bark, Melted Snowman and Naughty or Nice, which had two flavors in the jar.
With as many as 30 offerings at times, deciding what to buy is often a challenge for customers. To help, the family added Bitty Butter Boxes this past August. These sampler boxes include six smaller 4-ounce jars with the flavors rotating monthly.
One of the most common questions these peanut butter purveyors are asked is “How do you eat this?” To this they reply, “Grab a spoon.” Most fans of the gourmet product eat it straight out of the jar. It can also be dipped with graham crackers or put on toast. Just don’t try to slather it on bread — most of the flavors are too thick to spread well.
For that you can stick with jars of the base flavors: honey-roasted, white chocolate, dark chocolate, milk chocolate or butterscotch.
Stop by the business in downtown Butler and you can find another way to enjoy these treats. The store offers ice cream, along with homemade fudge and old-fashioned soda fountain flavored drinks. The ice cream can be top-ped with several flavors of their gourmet peanut butter or the more typical ice cream additions. Every cup or cone includes two toppings.
While a stop at the store makes for a great road trip, the lion’s share of the peanut butter is packaged and shipped by Stephen’s mom, Marsha. To date she has shipped the product to all 50 states, Australia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, England, New Zealand and all over Canada.
Udderly Nuts got its start after Stephen had spent 13 years in education and Talia worked at the post office. The family also owned a popular pumpkin patch in Butler for a time. But it proved tough to manage with a second child on the way and both Stephen and Talia working full-time jobs. They sold the pumpkin patch and started concentrating on making peanut butter, selling it at local farmers markets. As orders trickled in, they approached a social media influencer who tested their products online with her many followers watching. That’s when the Millers recognized the potential of social media.
“It just exploded,” says Stephen, who eventually left his school administrator job to focus on the business. “From that point on it’s been a fight to keep up. We quickly realized we needed more space. We couldn’t keep doing it in our basement.”
They found an empty building that once housed the Butler Examiner newspaper and remodeled it to include the storefront and a kitchen in back. From here Marsha ships anywhere from 100 to 300 orders a day. Their two kids help by labeling packages and starring in videos.
The success of the business has them looking around for more space to expand. “I flip-flop just about every day on whether we should just enjoy our small building payment we have here and keep doing the best we can, or whether it’s time to bite the bullet and try to expand somewhere,” Stephen says. “Thank goodness this has exploded to the stratosphere and I get to go do this every day. It’s been a blessing.”
You can visit Udderly Nuts at 5 N. Main St. in Butler daily from 3-9 p.m. and on Saturday from 1-9 p.m. It is closed on Sunday. To order online visit www.udderlynuts.com. New items are announced on Facebook.
