Vermont Habs Hot Sauce

Butterfly Bakery

https://butterflybakeryvt.com/

I started Butterfly Bakery of Vermont in 2003 baking cookies in the middle of the night in a local coffee shop. Some days I would be baking 5 pm to 5 am, then drop off the goodies to stores before going home to crash long enough to be refreshed for my “day job.” It only took a year or so of that before I found a better kitchen to rent that actually had daytime hours available. That kitchen was 3 miles along a dirt road near the top of a mountain, but I could fit up to 40 sheet pans in the oven at once, so that was nice.

In 2007 I finally got a space to call my own. I bought the equipment and moved into my lovely little bakery home on Barre St in Montpelier. Everything was cozy and copacetic there for a while, but it turned out that doing all of the baking while trying to run a full time business really only worked when I had the limitless energy of a single 20-something woman. Getting married and having children really put my priorities in perspective (as well as my finances - daycare is a pricey commitment), so I decided to grow the business. I hired my first regular employee in 2014 and in 2015 I expanded my tiny hot sauce side business into something that might actually pay some bills. Hot sauce is now more than 70% of our business and we are the #1 purchaser of Vermont grown chili peppers in the world.

I’m committed to slow, sustainable growth using local ingredients because I want to own the kind of company that I would want to work for and buy from. All of the maple syrup and chili peppers used in Butterfly Bakery of Vermont products are grown within 200 miles of our Barre, Vermont cannery. And I firmly believe that if I can’t pay livable wages that I should leave the employing to someone who can. I don’t know where each chapter of growth will take my little homespun business, but I am lucky to wake up each day loving what I do.