We were lucky to catch up with Meredith Simmerman recently and have shared our conversation below.

Meredith, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Often the greatest growth and the biggest wins come right after a defeat. Other times the failure serves as a lesson that’s helpful later in your journey. We’d appreciate if you could open up about a time you’ve failed

Reney’s Honey Butter began out of failure! After picking blackberries for hours, Meredith, the owner of Reney’s Honey Butter, came home with a conundrum. What in the world to do with all of these blackberries! After creating every blackberry dish she could imagine, she made a Blackberry Honey Butter with ingredients sitting on her kitchen counter. Sharing it with friends and family resulted in a massive similar response of “you should sell this it’s so good!” So, she went to the store and purchased jars, made labels for them and packaged them up pretty to invite people over for a tasting party and selling event. Party comes and goes with zero people showing up! (Now, this isn’t 100% accurate as Meredith’s parents did show up as it was hosted at their home!) Feeling defeated and deflated, she was ready to move on. Well that disappointment led to her sister making a post on social media about all the extra jars of Blackberry Honey Butter for sale and…..within 24 hours, Meredith had gotten over $1000 worth of orders for her butter! Reney’s Honey Butter was born from that post and Meredith has continued to learn that business is an adventure of ups and downs! Like her employee Lisa (who is an avid Braves fan) says, “you can’t bat 1000 every day!” You keep going, you remember your why and you surround yourself with people who cheer you on and believe in you!

Meredith, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Reney’s Honey Butter is the business formed by Meredith Irene (aka Reney!). What began as an afternoon of picking blackberries that turned into blackberry honey butter, has become so much more! After 6 years in business, Meredith has grown into her own brick and mortar store as well as a food truck. She has developed over 60 flavors of sweet and savory butters and now serves them with items for both breakfast and lunch inside her storefront she calls “The Cottage.” Some of these flavors include Toffee Honey Butter, Pumpkin Honey Butter, Garlic Parmesan Butter, Nashville Hot Butter, Everything Butter and even Cookie Monster Butter! In addition to our butter, breakfast and lunch, we offer some unique opportunities for community and connection. One of our sayings at Reney’s Honey Butter is “it’s more than just butter!”. We value community, connection and celebration both internally and externally which has led us to create the Reney’s Kids Club and Reney’s Butter Babes! Our Kids Club is a membership program where littles can join in on monthly events hosted at The Cottage including Breakfast with Santa, Tea with Princess Belle or even Pancakes with Elsa. We value families and helping them create memories and this has been a huge success with events selling out in minutes! Another way we have aimed to build community and build up women is through the Butter Babes. We highlight different amazing women each month and are hosting our first ever Butter Babe Brunch in July! Our atmosphere. food and people set us apart. We are proud of the relationships we have made and the reputation we have built in our town! Our goal is to have you leave Reney’s Honey Butter not only full of good food, but loved and seen! It is more than just Butter!

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Everyone can relate to the fact that Covid changed everything! Well in the restaurant world, that was definitely the case! Customers stopped coming. People stayed in their homes. Life seemed to be “cancelled.” What had worked for Reney’s Honey Butter in the past, no longer worked! So PIVOT we did! After a discussion with my employees at work one day about the fact that high school seniors were missing out on so much of the fun and celebration for their senior year, we decided to create something called a Grad Breakfast Box that we promoted as a delivery. We thought maybe we would get a handful of orders for it….But order after order after order kept coming in! So we kept thinking! We thought about the teachers who were working harder than ever and created a Teacher Gift Set to deliver and boom! Hundreds of orders came in! Our business grew tremendously during that time because we decided to think outside the box, pivot with the change we were experiencing and flow with the current versus against it! People who may not have come to our brick and mortar in the past were now becoming customers and our reach was extended beyond what we could have imagined!

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

When I first began Reney’s Honey Butter, we were only selling our products at markets, events and wholesale to different local grocery chains. One of the places Reney’s Honey Butter was carried was a small store in a small town about 45 minutes away that I hardly ever needed to restock. Well, I woke up one morning and just had a feeling I needed to go check on our products there. When I pulled up to this small town grocery, the parking lot was FULL! I was so confused as to why or what was going on! I finally found a spot to park and walked inside with my cooler case and saw several people walking up and down the aisles with tool belts or vests on. Out of curiosity, I stopped one of them to ask what in the world was happening here today and he responded with “we are filming a movie!” So I was definitely excited then to find out more! From that first conversation inside the store, I walked outside and eventually met the producer of the movie. On a whim, I told him about my business and offered to serve the actors and crew breakfast the following day! (Now, I was in no way prepared for a yes!) The man said he would talk with whom he needed to confer with and if they decided to do that, they would call me the next morning with the filming address and a time. I did not believe I would get a call! But 4AM the next day, my phone rings, a location was given and I rushed to get my butter and breakfast over there! I spent the whole morning on set, sharing about my business or products with them as they came to eat and had so much fun! This was one of the moments where taking a risk paid off! My dad frequently says “the answer is always no unless you ask!” So I encourage you to take the risks and see what could happen for you or your business!    

Contact Info:

• Website: www.reneyshoneybutter.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/ReneysHoneyButter
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/ReneysHoneyButter