We recently connected with Wendy French Barrett and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Wendy, thanks for joining us today. The first dollar you earn is always exciting – it’s like the start of a new chapter and so we’d love to hear about the first time you sold or generated revenue from your creative work?

When I first moved to Nashville, I went to the farmers market every weekend and enthusiastically bought local products to use in my home kitchen. I loved when I could see those vendors show up on store shelves.

The first store in Nashville to ever sell my handmade butter was Green Door Gourmet. I’ll never forget their store manager’s face the first time she tasted my 3 most popular flavors (Roasted Garlic Basil, Dark Wildflower Honey, and Lemon Rosemary)

I had been a huge fan of that store for a long time and had often referred to it as my version on Louis Vuitton because I’d love to have thousands of dollars to spend in there. It was the cream of the crop when it comes to local vendors in my mind, so I was really honored to have my product on their store shelves for Nashvillians to buy even if they couldn’t make it to the farmers market.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Wise Butter is Small-Batch, Artisanal Butters made lovingly by hand in Nashville, TN. Our butter allows you to have a spiritual experience with toast. Or, it can make that sad little recipe you’re working with sing. Our flavors change with the seasons (and our whims). We work to highlight local produce and other regional specialties. Spanning from familiar to unexpected, our one-of-a-kind butters are sure to please both gourmands and picky 5-year-olds alike.

Don’t deny what you know to be true: everything’s better with butter.

We currently have 10 different flavors of butter

Our product helps home cooks who lack the confidence to season their food without using a recipe. We solve the problem that chefs spend years studying for years in culinary school: how to make good ingredients taste even better with perfect seasoning.

We work out of a commissary kitchen in the heart of East Nashville which allows us to collaborate with other talented chefs to highlight their specialties. Most recently, we used our kitchen mate’s Herbs of Everything seasoning (a French combination of Everything Bagel & Herbes de Provence) to create a luscious Merlot and shallot sauce. We call it Herbes of Everything butter and it tastes like Beef bourguignon in one bite.

We have 26 retail partners, all in the state of Tennessee. We hope to expand once we have a production space.

We work with local farms to feature their produce and regional specialties like Dark Wildflower Honey and Cherokee Purple Tomatoes. Our most popular farm store is located in the downtown Nashville Farmers Market and you can pick our butter up there anytime on the weekends.

We offer at home delivery through Market Wagon. We’re able to list all of our products there and maintain our own inventory, so that is our distribution option for right now. They deliver to homes in all of middle Tennessee and 5 counties in Kentucky. We also sell our most popular flavors via their Memphis and Knoxville markets. More information about home delivery and shipping can be found on our website www.wisebutternashville.com

We have a complete list of our retail partners and events schedule posted there as well.

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Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I’m very fortunate to have so many customers interested in my product, so our focus now is on building a team of people who can help me package all of the products our stores need. We’re working on creating a unique work space where I hope fellow creatives with an interest in butter and self expression through cooking can thrive with a living wage and health benefits. We hope to create 1-3 jobs in the next year and currently have one part time employee.

All of our employees have been traveling musicians who’ve needed to supplement income when they weren’t on tour. We’ve been able to provide them the flexibility they need and they’ve offered us the hands and feet we’ve desperately needed.

I hope to collaborate with other business owners at my kitchen to create a collective health benefits opportunity to our employees who work with us.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to learn that an outsiders view of success is not realistic once you actually get into the specialty food industry. Profit margins are small already and if you want to “go big” like get into Whole Foods, you have to be willing to cut your margins even smaller. Often I’ve seen people compromise their product to get into bigger retailers, but i have eschewed that decision.

Earlier this year, Kroger offered us 3 stores but we have no way to expand that fast that quickly to meet their needs. It’s not feasible with a perishable handmade product. I’m not interested in buying a bunch of machinery to make butter pucks right now. I’d rather focus on the flavors.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.wisebutternashville.com/
• Instagram: @wisebutter
• Facebook: facebook.com/wisebutter

Image Credits
Jodi Boatman @brilliantpixelimaging Kat Wolle @wildartifact Ellen Beth Williams @ellenbethwilliams