Penny pinchers won’t give up their butter

With prices on a seemingly endless climb, people are tightening their belts and closely watching their budgets. One food item that isn’t being cut? Butter, especially high-end, boutique butter. The Los Angeles Times reports on an ultra-spendy, $60/pound butter that sells out within minutes in online flash sales, while The Guardian brings us the story that specialty butter sales in the UK are skyrocketing despite huge prices increases.

Both articles reference the idea that butter is one of the “little luxuries” that people turn to even as they cut back in other areas. Once they become acquainted with the velvety mouthfeel and enhanced flavors of high butterfat cultured butter, there is no turning back. Lydia Clarke, co-owner of two Southern California cheese shops that sell high-end imported butter, says that after tasting the good stuff, “You realize, ‘I can cut other things out of my life, but I cannot cut this butter out…The world is on fire. We have butter and cheese.”

In the UK, consumers are flocking to flavored options like All Things Butter’s Cinnamon Bun butter, which debuted in mid-2024. That butter has achieved an astonishing average quarterly growth of 245% in the past year. Adding a specialty butter is an easy – and affordable – way to enhance the flavor of almost any food without any faff. “We’ve seen a recent boom in demand for flavoured butters as they’ve become a popular and easy way to elevate everyday meals,” said Harriet Northover, a buyer at grocery chain Ocado.

If the $60 per pound butter is out of your price range, you can make your own cultured butter fairly easily. All it takes is time, some whipping, and a gentle kneading in cold water to create an extra creamy, highly flavored butter.