We recently connected with Danielle Bucki and have shared our conversation below.

Danielle, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Fit Butters are a healthy dessert flavored nut butter. We started our brand unintentionally. We made a healthy, natural nut butter with bold dessert flavors to help curb our own sweet tooth back in 2020 at the brink of the pandemic. The second my husband tasted the nut butter, he knew it was something special and he could sell it. Our mission began simply as a healthy alternative to the sugar and oil filled plain nut butters like Jif and Skippy, but also with more flavor to curb your cravings while trying to live a healthy lifestyle! Our mission was to help those who struggle making that transition to a healthier diet because of their cravings reach their goals. Whether it be someone new to wanting a healthier lifestyle, or someone on a strict diet restriction such as bodybuilding or an elite sport.

Our mission statement when we first started the company was “To provide an exceptional customer experience through a premium, health conscious, delicious nut butter and superior customer service at all times.” As we have grown as a company, we recognized that not only is this a heatlhy, great option for adults but also as a “treat without the cheat” and all the sugar for kids as well!

Why is this meaningful for me? I personally have the background of being a nurse. I was an RN on a cardiac floor taking care of patients with severe heart failure, transplants, and many cardiac events. Health has always been a priority for me personally. Now, as a parent, I know the struggle to find low sugar, healthy snacks that your kids will actually eat and enjoy. I am also working towards my functional medicine certification. Our society’s normalization of being unhealthy breaks my heart. I see the trouble in what people eat day to day. This includes overeating and the actual processed, high sugary, preservative filled foods that are consumed. I want to have a positive impact on making a change in this pandemic of being unhealthy and overweight. Our product is one small thing we can contribute to help people adhere to a healthier lifestyle for themselves and their families.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

As a registered nurse, my business experience was zero prior to Fit Butters. Thankfully, my husband’s background was much more extensive with a master’s degree in business, owning a business himself, and working for Generals Mills as a brand manager. But even with this experience, there is no doubt that it took many timeless hours and dedication to get where we are. Not to mention, as my husband always says, a little luck. We have been blessed with many situations just working out in our favor, but also many things falling through and not working which were just not meant to be. A blessing in disguise more times than not. My husband often uses the phrase, “hustle, hard work, humility” or the three H’s. We spent many hours where we wish we could have been with our kids, or away from home on business trips. No clocking out or someone else taking over when we needed time off. People don’t see that entrepreneurship, while it has its ups and it is the American dream, has many down sides. You aren’t working 40 hours a week, you end up working 60-80 hours in order to be successful. Using you resources and connections rather than spending money or raising capitol. We have been blessed to be self funded and net positive every year since our start in 2020. Social media has been my biggest contribution. It has been a constant learning curve, but when used correctly it has been one of our biggest weapons. I think being self funded and net positive, along with doing this all ourselves since the start is our proudest accomplishment. We are in so many large retailers like Publix, Walmart, Hyvee, Wegman’s, Meijer, Kroger, Coborns, and more! We didn’t use brokers to do this. It was myself and my husband until our first employee hire this year who helps with events and sales. We still make everything ourselves in our GMP-certified facility with our amazing 7-8 production staff. We have learned to pivot and figure things out as we go. I give so much credit to my husband learning so many things on the fly and nonstop going to figure things out. Working for a large corporate business is much different having to wear multiple hats and figuring it out on your own.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

We have been mostly self funded. We used some of our own funds when we first started from Ryan’s other business and had a friend invest 50K when we first started for a small equity in our brand. We have spent money smart and like it was ours since we started. We didn’t pay ourselves to start and I continued to work as a RN on the side until March 2022. This past year, we started paying real expenses with salaries and hiring new positions for shipping/receiving and hiring our sales/events employee. Spending money not like we have endless amounts or deep pockets, but like it was our own money because it has been. We worked hard and slowly it has paid off.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

We started making Fit Butters in a commercial kitchen with the help of friends. As time went on, we started having one or two production days a week in the GMP facility we now work in, leaning on people to figure out efficiencies we needed to improve on. We slowly invested in larger pieces of equipment like a piston filler, nut grinders, and seal induction. We finally invested in a semi automated line through a small business loan from the state last year after having an increase in demand with retailers. Learning to pivot and ask for help in areas that may not be your expertise has been the best thing we can advise. Finding resources through LinkedIn and other business owners is so important and will be a life savior. We would never personally want to outsource our product being made by a co-man as it allows us to control the quality and not wait for line time. While it takes more work with production planning and sitting on raw goods, it has been a success for us. Ryan has leaned on many people’s help and been called in at random hours to fix many problems as we go, but we wouldn’t have done it any other way.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.fitbutters.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fitbutters/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fitbutters
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@fitbutters/featured
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@fitbutters