I love peanut butter. So did two friends at the University of Oregon. I make my own peanut butter. So did those two wild friends decide to make their peanut butter once on a rainy day. The difference? They built an empire that sells peanut butter worth millions every year across the United States. I am cursing them for not selling in India. This is a story of Keeley Tillotson, Erika Welsh, their journey of mixing wild things with peanuts to sell them at farmers’ local markets to selling in thousands of stores across the United States.
Pursue Your Passion like Wild Friends
So, the story goes as once upon a time two roommates ran out of their stock of peanut butter. It was raining and so the duo decided to make butter on their own. That day, Wild Friends was born.
Later, they found themselves adding crazy flavors to their peanut butter that became a hit with their small group of consumers. Soon, they were at a crossroads when they had to decide between either their university or the business.
They moved forward with the latter.
In an article from four years ago, Forbes reports Wild Friends Foods to be marching towards an annual sales of over $7 million. A business directory website places their revenue for the third quarter of 2020 at $14 million (the authenticity of which we could not verify). Wild Friends is growing wildly and that’s because Keeley and Erika pursued their butter enterprise wildly.
In our wild and unverified opinion, people do seem to be preferring their passion now more than ever. And, we wanted to bring this story to you for two reasons. First, we wanted to let you know just how much we too love peanut butter. But most importantly, because we feel these stories can inspire yet more people to pursue their passion, even if, sometimes, at the cost of their college education or a stable job.
Be Creative & Novel
With geographical boundaries blurred, differentiation is important today more than ever. As for Keeley and Erika, there were loads of peanut butter manufacturers already in the U.S. markets. One of these manufactures even sued the duo once for using their trademark ‘Squirrel’ back when it was called Wild Squirrel. Squirrel changed to Friends but their enterprise remained Wild.
Wild Friends differentiates their nut butter offerings in terms of crazy flavors and healthy ingredients. Their offerings claim to be low on sugar and free of chemical preservatives. Sometimes ago, they also introduced a new range of super-nutritious nut butter in partnership with a health supplement manufacturer, called Vital Proteins.
Be Responsible
You being an irresponsible business makes it an incentive for some other brand to conduct their business responsibly.
We might sound like a “value creation fanatic” by now. But, it is our belief that businesses and other enterprises can do much more when they are responsive to the actual needs of their consumers and the society they operate in. Our aim, at Mahtab Journal, is to empower small enterprises to build strong communication lines with their stakeholders so they may listen well to the needs of their stakeholders and respond to these needs accordingly.
Brands like Wild Friends, with their B-Corp certification, and Dove, by setting a higher advertising standard for beauty products, set a benchmark for other brands to either follow or face backlash. Thus, it is in the mutual interest of both (businesses and their consumers) for businesses to conduct their operations responsibly.
Finally, these three features of pursuing your passion, being creative and novel, and responsible business conduct, seem to us as common across successful enterprises. We infer that it cannot (or, at least, should not) be without any of these fundamental features that a start-up may go any further in today’s global economy. We look forward to a world that has a greater role for its enterprises and where businesses are not phishing for phools.