MyBiz: Butter Me Up continues to spread

CEDAR RAPIDS — Tracey Norman, a health-conscious nurse, began making all-natural peanut butter for her family a few years ago.

She then decided to see if offering nut butters to others might make a good business.

'And there was such a great farmers market environment here that I thought, 'why not start there,'' she said.

In 2013, Norman started off selling honey roasted peanut butter and almond butter at the Cedar Rapids Downtown Farmers' Market. By the end of the season, she was offering nine fresh-ground nut butters, including the popular white chocolate almond and dark chocolate hazelnut varieties.

Butter Me Up, Norman's business, now takes part in six farmers markets, including Des Moines and Davenport.

Norman said her customers have been a big part of Butter Me Up's success.

'We have a lot of people who meet us at the farmers market but aren't from the local area,' she said. 'They meet us at the local farmers markets and they take it back to where they are from and pass it on to their friends. Our customers are a really great group of people. People don't realize the variety of customers that come to us from so many different locations.'

Business continues to grow in and around Cedar Rapids. While the company did have a location at the NewBo City Market for a short time, Norman said they decided to move their main production facility to Davenport.

'Logistically this worked better for us because of who is running the business in Iowa,' she said. Butter Me Up products still are sold at The Shops at 208 in the NewBo neighborhood.

These days, Norman is keeping especially busy expanding the company to the Charleston, S.C. area, where she relocated in the fall of 2014.

She said the ability to grow her business in the Charleston area was the No. 1 reason she chose to relocate there.

'I wanted to introduce Butter Me Up to another area with the same feel (as Cedar Rapids.) I chose the Charleston area because they are a big foodie community and have lots of farmers markets and are big into buying locally,' she said.

Norman said that despite expansion, the company is committed to keeping their production small using local products.

'We want to keep it small batch because that is one of the biggest draws to Butter Me Up,' Norman said, adding they are still a family-owned and family-run business, as her sister helps oversee the Iowa production and sales.

Another big area of growth for the company, Norman said, is online sales.

'We are seeing so much demand for the product online and are really looking at the e-commerce side of the business and making sure our website is really user friendly for our customers to just hop on there and place an order,' she said. 'We are creating videos so they can learn about how our product is made. Our website is our centralized location for our customers and we are incorporating my social media to reach our customers in more areas.'

At a Glance

Company: Butter Me Up

Owner: Tracey Norman

Contact: (563) 940-4685; nutsaboutnutbutter.com

Know a company in business for more than a year that would make an ideal My Biz? Contact Francie Williamson at francie.williamson@thegazette.com