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Bloomberg

Every other Friday, exactly at 3pm, a highly coveted product goes on sale and sells out within minutes.
The limited release isn’t for the drop of a new sneaker or the latest Labubu. It’s for butter.
Saxelby Cheesemongers sells up to 60 pounds (27kg) of cult favourite Animal Farm Creamery butter at an eye-popping US$60 per pound during its online-only flash sales. The average cost of butter is about US$4.36 per pound. Made in Vermont, Animal Farm’s super-creamy cultured butter isn’t available almost anywhere else.
Americans are increasingly willing to splurge on fancier, fattier butter – prized for its richer flavour and velvety-smooth mouthfeel. A bumpy economy and high inflation have pushed supermarket prices up roughly 25 per cent over the last five years, but people with money to spend are still shelling out on little luxuries. High-end butter for cooking, baking and slathering straight from the package is the latest indulgence.

Marc Dobiecki, 64, loves that the Animal Farm butter “sits on your tongue a little bit more”. He recently spent US$108 for a pound, including shipping, after two previous failed attempts to get some. He prevailed on his third try, racing to place the order while boarding a plane.
“I held up traffic,” he said. “You’ve got to really want this butter.”
Sales of super-premium butter and premium butter surged double digits over the last year, outpacing the growth of mainstream butter, which saw sales tick up 1.1 per cent, according to NielsenIQ. The market research firm said mainstream butter has been losing market share, declining to under 30 per cent from nearly 34 per cent two years ago.
Although consumers have traded down to less expensive private-label versions of coffee, peanut butter, syrup and chips, butter is a different story.

Once people have tasted better butters, they don’t want to go back, said Lydia Clarke, co-owner of two Southern California cheese shops that sell specialty butters from brands including Rodolphe Le Meunier, Maison Bordier and Ploughgate Creamery.
“You realise, ‘I can cut other things out of my life, but I cannot cut this butter out,’” Clarke said. “The world is on fire. We have butter and cheese.”
Many butter aficionados in the US first encountered higher-fat butters during holidays in Europe and would load up before their flights home.
In the 1990s, Straus Family Creamery in Northern California started making a butter with 85 per cent butterfat at the request of Chez Panisse founder Alice Waters, who wanted a product comparable to what she’d tasted in France, said Meryl Marr, Straus’ vice-president of marketing. In the US, most butter was made with 80 per cent butterfat.
“We’ve raised prices and people are still demanding it,” she said. To this day, the organic butter is still made with an antique butter churn, limiting production.
Butter’s popularity began rising during the pandemic, when people started cooking and baking more at home.

The shift gave way to the viral butter-board trend – when softened butter, embellished with flowers, herbs and fresh fruit, was swirled onto cutting boards and served with bread and crudités – helping elevate the ingredient to main-event status.
And butter has benefited from a growing backlash, championed by US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, against ultra-processed foods with long ingredient lists like margarine.
With butter, “you have about the cleanest label possible: it’s cream and salt”, said Chris Galen, executive director of the American Butter Institute, a trade group.
With tariffs hitting imported goods of all kinds, American butter makers could benefit in the months ahead.
“We’re getting a lot more interest from our customers – they’re looking for domestic sources,” said Michael Burdeny, chief commercial officer of California Dairies Inc., which makes Challenge and Danish Creamery butters. The company is working on expanding its premium butter production.

Top-tier butters include those made with milk from grass-fed cows or those made with a higher level of butterfat, which is the fat naturally found in milk. European butters are usually required to be made with at least 82 per cent butterfat, as opposed to American butter, which must be a minimum of 80 per cent.
Vermont Creamery has been making its cultured butter for decades, but recently overhauled its packaging to highlight its European-style credentials and rich flavour. The new packages hit stores in August, general manager Harrison Kahn said.
When it comes to baking, butter with a higher fat content can result in a flakier pie crust, culinary experts said. Cookbook author Dorie Greenspan said she sometimes chills a crust made with higher-fat butter for longer before baking it.
But for the most part, premium butters can be swapped into recipes calling for the standard product.

“It’s a bit of a treat without going crazy,” said Pamela Duvick, 64, who buys Ploughgate Creamery or Les Prés Salés butter to spread on toast and biscuits. She typically orders four pounds of Ploughgate at a time from Saxelby to minimise shipping costs and freezes much of it, wrapped first in plastic and then in a freezer bag.
As interest in premium butter rises, supermarket chains are increasing their inventory and giving premium butter more prominent displays.
“There are so many customers who have just been hooked,” said Gary Zickel, director of food innovation for Mariano’s and Metro Market grocery stores, divisions of Kroger. “The US has really stepped up its game.”

Masha Mekker, a speech therapist who lives in Cleveland, was visiting Chicago when she seized the chance to buy French butter. She snapped up a block of Isigny Sainte-Mère and noted there were roughly seven left in the shop.
When she returned the next day to stock up before heading home, they were gone.
“I was heartbroken,” Mekker said. “We have to have that butter in the house.”


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Rodolphe Le Meunier’s churned butter. Photo: @rodolphelemeunier/Instagram

Butter from the Straus Family Creamery. Photo: @strausmilk/Instagram

The Straus Family Creamery’s butter is made in small batches with an antique churn. Photo: @strausmilk/Instagram

Vermont Creamery butter atop a blueberry muffin. Photo: @vermontcreamery/Instagram

Vermont Creamery’s Everything and Lox Compound Butter. Photo: @vermontcreamery/Instagram

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Whether it’s organic, grass-fed or made with an antique churn, once you acquire a taste for fancier, fattier butter, there’s no turning back


Whether it’s organic, grass-fed or made with an antique churn, once you acquire a taste for fancier, fattier butter, there’s no turning back.


The dairy product that’s become an unlikely luxury item: super-premium butter

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Whether it’s organic, grass-fed or made with an antique churn, once you acquire a taste for fancier, fattier butter, there’s no turning back

Whether it’s organic, grass-fed or made with an antique churn, once you acquire a taste for fancier, fattier butter, there’s no turning back