Wild Butters: You'll Hide Them Away

When I was introduced to the incredible nut butters of Wild Squirrel, I had no idea that the two founders of the company--Erika and Keeley--would go on to launch successful bids on both the ABC program Shark Tank as well as on Kickstarter. When I contacted them to let them know that several foodies had told me they had developed serious addictions to their product, they sent me a batch of them personally and promptly got me addicted as well.

The products are now known as Wild Friends Nut Butters, but they are just as good. In a recent sampling, the group particularly liked the Cinnamon Raisin, which makes a bagel (yes, even a Cinnamon Raisin bagel) even better. The Vanilla Espresso, the Honey Pretzel, and the Chocolate Coconut make yogurt parfaits richer and can even be eaten straight from the jar when the mean reds or the throbbing blues hit you.

Wild Squirrel products are available on Amazon (and well-priced) and you can also order directly from the company at  http://wildfriendsfoods.com/

Wild Friends now offers single-serving packets and a new flavor, Sesame Cranberry, which I'm anxious to try.

On the Facebook page for Intrepid Foodie, I'll be offering some testimonials from the foodies, so you can get a clearer idea of how unique these products are.

For the record, here is a photograph of Erika and Keeley, the two University of Oregon students who dreamed up these butters.

And here's their story:

This all began one dreary Sunday at the University of Oregon. The two of us were in our college apartment, scraping the bottom of yet another jar of peanut butter. With no more peanut butter and a surplus of celery, we were faced with a familiar conundrum. However, neither of us wanted to ride our bike in the pouring rain to the store to buy more.

Luckily, we had a bag of raw peanuts, a brand new food processor, and two squirrelly little minds. It didn’t take long before we had created our first batch of homemade peanut butter. However, as creative chefs, we were not content with leaving our freshly made peanut butter to be just plain or crunchy. So we set to adding every conceivable ingredient from our pantry. We sprinkled in cinnamon, raisins, chocolate chips, coffee, coconut… the list went on and on.

After extensive sampling, we decided our product was simply too good to keep to ourselves, so we brought a few jars over to our friends. They loved it, and encouraged us to make a website to sell our tasty creations.

A few days after making our website, we discovered that talkative and enthusiastic friends make word of mouth a powerful marketing tool! We were immediately kept busy with constant orders from friends, family, and fellow students.

We launched in local grocery stores in November, and almost a year later we are in over 150 stores and growing every day!

We have big dreams for our little company. Check out our blog, listen to our podcast, or follow Wild Friends Nut Butter on Facebook or Twitter to see what’s happening next!

Tell the Intrepid Foodie how you like the butters.