Nutty Novelties: Spoon-Worthy Nut Butters
For the 266th feature of our "Together Talks" campaign, we collaborated with Nutty Novelties and Co-Owner, Jesse Mangum. Our spoon-worthy nut butters are crafted with care to be irresistibly fresh and flavorful, always low in sugar, and packed with protein. Made from simple, wholesome ingredients, they’re perfect for spreading, dipping, cooking, baking, smoothie-ing, or just diving in spoon-first.
"Together Talks" feature 266: Nutty Novelties presented by KLS - Your Trusted Shipping Solutions In The USA
What separates you from your competition? What have been the biggest challenges? Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company?
What have you learned since becoming an entrepreneur? Share a decision that you made that was detrimental? What is your why?
Story of how it was created?
My older brother started Nutty Novelties back in 2012, actually, as a farmer's market side gig. He had another full-time job Monday through Friday and was just doing this for a little side income and a little fun, basically. He actually started out with unique trail mixes. He started having people do a make-your-own-trail-mix bar, which was the original concept, and set it up and sell it at the farmer's market.
He was actually a snack salesman for his full-time job and had some connections and friends who told him this would be a good idea to try out. So we started doing that, and it wasn't really going all that great. He was getting some sales, but nothing crazy.
Then another friend of his told him, "Hey, you should make these into some unique flavors of peanut butter and different nut butters." And he was like, "Oh, that'll never work." But he tried it. Again, he started out rough. He would actually bring a tabletop nut grinder to the market with a big old extension cord, a couple of tables, and all of his jars, lids, and everything. He would grind it up on site, and people loved it, but it was messy, definitely not food safe, and very slow as well.
So eventually, that same friend let him grind the nut butters at his shop instead of doing it at the farmer's market. He had a nut grinder and let my brother grind the nut butters after hours when the store was closed. That's when I remember coming in. I was in high school at the time, and I was helping him do this. We would haul our jars and lids, peanuts, and raw materials into the shop after hours, grind up the product, seal it up in jars with little foil seals that went over the top of the jar, and then take the packaged product and sell it at the farmer's market on the weekends.
I guess it was around that time that he got unexpectedly fired from his full-time job. So he only had a little bit of proof of concept with this whole nut butter thing. He took that as God kicking him in the pants to basically say, "Hey, I want you to do this more than just a side gig." And he went with that. Monday through Friday was pretty boring for him for a while.
Again, I was in high school, so I was just helping him out on the side. I would help make the product and sell it at different farmers markets and stuff when I wasn't in school. Then, during the summers, I would work for them full-time, making deliveries to stores. There were only a few stores at that time, of course. We were mostly selling at farmers markets and knocking on the doors of new stores to try to get them to buy the product. That was the majority of my job.
What separates you from your competition?
First of all, it's completely all-natural. It doesn't have palm oil, hydrogenated oil, or the preservatives of your standard big guys like Jif, Skippy, or even Justin's.
We feel that's why farmers markets are such a big part of what we do, because we feel like we can provide a very fresh experience, almost like produce, without the preservatives and still have that fresh, straight-from-the-grinder taste. And then the game became recreating that fresh farmers market experience in the grocery store.
Not only that, but we also have the unique flavors that we offer. We have 20 different kinds that you just never see. You never see habanero honey peanut butter or espresso peanut butter. You see chocolate peanut butter sometimes, but not that often. And then other nut butters, like pistachio butter, you never see without oils or preservatives added. So we just offer so many different kinds that you never see in the store.
What have been the biggest challenges?
For the first several years, we did everything ourselves. It was Caleb and me occasionally. We eventually hired a couple of other people as well, part time. We had a production manager who would be in charge of making the product, and it was pretty much him and me who would go out and knock on doors and sell the product and also deliver it.
We didn't have outside salespeople. We didn't have distributors. We just had ourselves and our own cars. But as you grow, you can only do that so far. Literally, geographically, you can only go so far doing that. So that's been the challenge: finding enough good people. People that you can trust, people who are going to get the job done just as well if not better than we could.
We've been really blessed over the years to have a great team, and a lot of them today have been with us almost since the beginning. Several of them have been around for five to ten years, and you just don't see that very often. We only grow at the speed of the people you can find who are trustworthy and quality, and we've been blessed to have that.
Another thing is physical space. We started out on the third floor of Caleb's townhouse, so a pallet of peanuts would get dropped off, and we would carry every box up three flights of stairs to grind it up and turn it into nut butter. We did that for a few years, and then I think 2017 is when we moved to where we are now.
It's actually a popcorn store, and in the back, in his warehouse area, we started in one little room that Caleb found through a Facebook ad. We moved into that one room, and that felt like a dream compared to the third floor of Caleb's townhouse. Then that started to feel a little tight.
It's kind of an old building, and at the time, there were three businesses operating out of the same warehouse. There were several rooms that were unused and just had old junk in them. So over time, we would look at the next room over and say, "Hey, can we get all that old stuff out of there, finish it up, and make it safe and usable? And you can increase our rent a little bit for that." And he was like, "Oh, yeah, absolutely."
So, one room at a time, we would just take over a little bit more and more of the popcorn guy's building. Eventually, the third business that was operating out of there also left, so we pretty much doubled our space when they left.
Now it still feels a little tight to this day, and we're making the best of it with the space that we have. But obviously, the physical space is a huge limitation as well, and that's something we're continuing to deal with.
Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company?
The biggest one is SQF. For those who aren't familiar with SQF, it stands for Safe Quality Food, and it's pretty much the highest hill there is as far as food safety certification. We've been tackling that, and that's pretty much been all of 2026 for us: getting that done. We're coming up on our audit in about a month and a half, and we still feel like there are some things to get done, but we think it's going to go well. We're excited for what that can bring us.
We've had some really big customers knocking on the door asking for that, and a couple specifically have actually wanted to walk with us along that journey. It's been like, "Hey, if you guys get this, we're serious about you," kind of thing.
It's a massive investment. It's not something we take lightly, going from the third floor of Caleb's house to our own facility to becoming SQF certified. Of all the jumps, I think this is the biggest jump. It has been that big of a deal to get to this level of documentation and structure. Just everything has to be so perfect, it feels like, for SQF. And now that we're almost there, it all makes sense.
When we first were looking at it from the outside, it just felt so daunting, but I'm really glad we did that. That's coming at the end of October, and that should unlock a whole lot of newer, bigger customers, specifically private label.
We have our own brand that we sell in Giant, ShopRite, and soon-to-be Fresh Thyme, as well as online through Amazon. But SQF is going to open up the private-label and bulk side of our business even more, because it's those customers that really want to see that next level of food safety certification.
What were your concerns to transition to starting your own business?
In those days, it was easy to just have a side gig, work for my brother, do a farmer's market, and make the product. It was just fun, and I enjoyed it. While I wasn't in school, it was a great job to have.
It got serious near the end of my college days, around 2018, when the business was growing more and more every year and it was kind of getting out of Caleb's hands and onto a full-time scale, to the point where he was saying, "I need you to become a partner with me. I need you full-time, basically."
I remember when I was in college, during my junior year, he called me up and said, "I'm very serious about offering you to become a partner in the business as soon as right now, as soon as you finish your junior year of college. But I totally understand you're probably going to want to finish out your college days as well."
So that's what I did. I finished out my fourth year of college and graduated with a degree in global business and finance. Hopefully, we'll use that global business aspect soon.
My reason for saying yes, I guess, was that I enjoyed it, and I felt like the company was just getting started. I saw the trajectory that we were achieving with getting into stores locally and doing so well at the farmers markets. Customers really were just crazy about it, and I figured, why not?
It's crazy how naive I was at that time as well, because it has definitely been much harder than I thought it was going to be. But at the same time, even though we're 10 times the size today that we were then, I still feel like we're just getting started. There's so much more I'm curious about, like what we can achieve, what we can do, and how far this can go.
So, yeah, in a sense, I feel the same today as I did then. We're just getting started.
What have you learned since becoming an entrepreneur?
That's a great question, too. So many skills that I did not have. I'm not even sure what I would characterize it as.
I remember in the first six months to a year of being full-time at Nutty, I remember making a lot of mistakes, to the point where I was like, "Caleb, I don't know if you want me to be doing this. I'm not good at this."
My job had changed from just going to the farmer's market and basically doing what Caleb told me to do. He would give me all the instructions and tell me what to do. Now, you're managing all the farmers markets. You have a couple of employees who are also going to farmers markets, and you have to get them set up and make sure they have everything they need. You need to interact with the market managers, have the schedule set, and have the paperwork done. It's up to you to go get new store accounts and store leads, and here's your incentive and your commission structure. Go get it, basically.
In that environment, I was really incentivized and excited by that. But, like I said, I made a lot of mistakes, to the point where I was thinking, "This might not be for me. I went to school for finance and analytics, sitting behind a desk looking at a spreadsheet." When I was in school, the spreadsheet always had the numbers already on it. It already assumed sales, and I would just analyze the sales. Here's the future forecast and the present value.
Now it was like, "No, you've got to go make some numbers. You've got to go put those numbers on the screen by talking to people and making them buy the product."
So I was never a salesperson. I felt like I was more analytically minded or numbers-minded, but I needed to come out of my introverted shell. I'm still an introvert, but I'm more able to interact with people and just better in conversation and people skills in general. That's probably the number one thing. Then the next would be just sheer grit and stick-to-itiveness, and just never freaking quit.
Because you can work so hard on something, and you think it's so good and it's going to be great, and then something simple could change, and all that work you did is no longer valuable. I don't know how to describe it. You can just get knocked down very easily, but you've got to keep going.
It's usually when things are at their absolute hardest, and when you just want to quit, that the breakthrough is right around the corner. I've experienced that on greater and greater scales as we've continued to grow. Looking at my struggles back when I started, I'm like, "Dude, that was nothing. Why were you ever worried about that?" The problems and the stakes just get bigger and bigger.
But I've experienced it enough now that I know that you will eventually figure it out. The problems will get resolved if you stick to it and try your best not to give up. On the other side of that is greater peace, greater strength, resilience, and experience. So you just have to have that faith that that's around the corner.
Share a decision that you made that was detrimental?
I would say probably some of my greatest mistakes have been with some of our people and my personality being harsh at times. Not in a mean way, but in a, "Hey, let's go. Let's make this better" kind of way. At least, that's my intention.
Some of my greatest mistakes have been when I've intended to say, "Hey guys, here's a problem. I want to make this better. What can we do to keep this from happening in the future?" That's what I think I'm saying in my head. But in reality, I was kind of being more of a jerk and making it feel like it was on them personally, or a personal attack, or that they're dumb or something like that. Even though that wasn't my intention, again, with those people skills, you have to talk in other people's language.
There's that book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. It's a great book because it's all about really speaking other people's language, and that's how they are going to hear something, not just spouting what I think is right.
That's part of why my brother and I work together so well, because we kind of have the same way of talking. We can be a little sarcastic. We can be a little snarky. That's how we show love to each other and push each other to be better. "Hey, why are you doing this? That's dumb. Why would you do that?" That's the way our family talks to each other, but it doesn't translate to other people. Other people just realize you're being a jerk. That's probably the biggest thing.
I'm sure there are more things, like, "Man, I wish we had set up GS1 barcodes from day one," because now we're going through the process of transitioning them over. But that's something we just didn't really see coming at the time. We were just selling jars at farmers markets, so I don't necessarily blame us for that.
What is your why?
I would go back to what I said earlier: I genuinely enjoy it. I think what goes into the enjoyment is the excitement and curiosity as to what this could be. If I didn't have that, I don't know if I'd be able to keep going.
It's that excitement and curiosity of what could be that drives me. But at the same time, on a more spiritual note, I have kind of asked God, "What do you want me to be doing? Is this what I'm supposed to be doing?" Every six months to a year, I kind of sit back and think, "What am I supposed to be doing? What do you want me to be doing with my life? And if you want me to be doing something else, show me what that should be."
I'm an open book, so to speak. You can do what you want with my life. And for whatever reason, He doesn't take me anywhere else. I take that as, you know, "Keep doing what you're doing. Keep trying, keep learning, keep growing. If I want you to go somewhere else, I'll show you the way," basically.
Unless there's a clear sign or a clear, "Hey, you definitely should be doing this other thing over here," I take that as, "Keep going. Keep going, keep doing your thing, and doing your best." So that's kind of how I look at it from a bird's-eye view.
Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy?
Everything is that incremental progress. I don't think we've had just one big moment. Don't get me wrong, we've had some big wins, like getting into Giant, getting into ShopRite, getting into Fresh Thyme, or getting into some new big bulk account. Those are great. But I think it's all of that progress together on a daily basis that I get kind of addicted to.
Just yesterday, the team kind of solved a big problem in our warehouse where we set up a new chemical closet. It sounds so silly, but that was a problem that we needed to solve, and we kept running into roadblocks. Where are we going to put it? How big does it need to be? How are we going to get this accomplished with our limited space?
They figured it out and did it. I can't put a big, "Oh, when that happened, that was amazing" moment on it. But I can sit and reflect on, "Man, where were we two or three years ago?" And then I immediately feel a sense of pride, because look at all the progress.
It's that daily getting 1% better kind of thing. You kind of get addicted to that. I know it's kind of a weird answer, but I don't think I can pinpoint, "Man, we were really on top of the world at this exact moment."
It's been little wins along the way. When I sit back and think about where we came from or where we were a couple of years ago, I'm filled with pride and joy at how far we've come.
Piece of Advice
The need to try new things and not be afraid of the fact that you don't know what it's going to look like on the other side.
I was just talking to someone about this yesterday, and nothing ever goes exactly according to plan, ever. You have a project in mind, and maybe you get it accomplished, but it wasn't the linear path that you thought it was going to be. It was zigs up and zigs down, and maybe you eventually got there. Maybe it took longer, or maybe it was right on time, but it's never exactly the way you thought it was going to be.
I think the fear of that is what holds people back, and it can hold me back at times, too. But you've got to be okay with that. You have to be willing to do it anyway. And like you said, waiting is only going to make it harder.
So the earlier, the better. The earlier you do it, the less painful it's going to be.
Promo Code
Purchase from their site, Nutty Novelties, and use promo code below:
PeanutHarvest -> 10% off!
Community Callout
My brother and business partner.
Alex from Aaron Graphics
He is helping us with the GS1 barcode transition and he's been amazing.
Alchemy food safety services / Bonna Cannon
She is our consulatant and they've been really helpful. We would not have been able to do anything with SQF without them.
In Closing
KLS wants to thank Nutty Novelties and Co-Owner, Jesse Mangum., for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!
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