Chocolate Sea Salt Almond Butter

ABOUT BIG SPOON ROASTERS

At the turn of the millennium, Mark was serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Zimbabwe, where he learned to make his favorite food – peanut butter – by roasting the nuts and grinding them with stones.  Rather than stopping at the traditional coarse peanut paste that was most often added to stew in his community, Mark added honey, sea salt, and coconut oil and made one of the best things he’d ever tasted. The experience was also a revelation that the best foods are often the simplest—made with fresh ingredients, care, and craft. 

10 years later, in the midst of an American culinary renaissance that included everything from artisan bread, coffee, and craft beer, Mark realized that his favorite food was still stuck in a mass-produced state of bland inertia. Newer peanut butter brands had popped up during this time, of course, but none took the care in ingredient sourcing, freshness, and small-batch production that Mark and Megan sought in the foods they purchased. Inspired by the memory of the unforgettably fresh peanut butter he had made in Africa, Mark thought that other peanut butter lovers might be excited to try something similar and that small-batch, handcrafted nut butters could be the foundation of a new business.  

Likewise, as a pescatarian athlete with a dairy intolerance, Megan had long loved nut butter as a source of nutrition. Years earlier, she started making her own nut butter-based energy bars, because she couldn’t find anything on the market that provided the energy she needed, was easy to digest, and tasted good.  From the first batches of nut butter Mark made their kitchen, she made fresh batches of energy bars that were suddenly even more coveted by their friends and family.   

Mark and Megan’s dream of a business that would use food as a force for good now had two product lines. After working on recipes and packaging for a few months, they sold their first jars and bars as Big Spoon Roasters at a bicycle race in January 2011.