Butter proudly supports small, local, and independent businesses in our search to source sustainable, high quality and ethical ingredients and products.
We believe that building a strong, vibrant local foods economy is a win-win-win situation: more (and better) jobs for our neighbors, a less harsh impact on our beautiful landscape, and fresher, more delicious food for you.
This is a future worth fighting for, and we're creating new paths in good company.
We do accept donations to further our mission-oriented Social Benefit Goals.
You can also visit our COMMUNITY WISH LIST for more ideas on helping us out! We’ve begun an advisory board and would welcome your input and involvement. Contact Dan for more information about any of these opportunities.
Local Food Sources
Our butter: Hope Creamery in Hope MN With a name like ours, we better be working with the best butter around – and you can be assured that we are. Hope Creamery is one of the last small, independent creameries in Minnesota, and each 900 gallon batch is still made by feel.
Our main veggies suppliers: the Hidden Stream Farm network in Elgin, MN; Pleasant Valley Farms, The Co-Op Partners Warehouse, and Bix Produce, and the Hmong American Farmers Association.
We truly appreciate the bounty of the Midwest's farmers – overwhelming in the summer, low key and solid in the winter. While we are able to source many local veggies year round through Bix Produce (including greenhouse grown Minnesota Bushel Boy tomatoes, sprouts, REVol greens, and mushrooms) there are some other local organizations and businesses near and dear to our hearts because they share our values of community building so deeply. We are pleased to be a Community Supported Agriculture drop site for St. Croix Valley CSA, Hmong American Farmers Association, and Whetstone Farm. We love getting veggies and herbs from the many local farmers at the Kingfield Farmers' Market on Sundays.
For the past few years we've even gone hyper-local by growing herbs and vegetables on the boulevard of 37th Street. Come see what's growing and you might just find some of it in your meal! It's an open community garden, so you're welcome to volunteer or share in the harvest as well.
Our turkey: Ferndale Farms in Cannon Falls, MN. John and Erica raise free range turkeys about 50 miles outside the Twin Cities on a family farm now in its third generation. We roast turkey breasts for our sandwiches and make a terrific turkey burger and turkey-sloppy-jo from their ground turkey.
Our milk: Prairie Farms and Land-O-Lakes Cooperative and Schroeder dairy - we are a rich state for dairy production indeed! We source alternative milks through Oatley and Willas (oat milk), and Pacific (almond milk).
Our eggs: Forsman Farms, Howard Lake, MN a fourth generation family farm.
Our chicken, ham, pork and beef: Hidden Stream Farm in Elgin, MN. Naturally raised on a second generation family farm! Lisa and Eric do great work raising our wonderful meats AND coordinate a food hub that brings us veggies, local fruit, and more.
Our whole grain flours, oats, seeds and beans, and corn chips: Whole Grain Milling in Welcome, MN. Our white and whole wheat flours come from Swany Flour Mill in Freeport, MN. Our wild rice is grown and harvested by the Red Lake Nation in Red Lake, MN
We source cheese from Rochdale Creamery in WI and Blaser's Cheeses in WI and we have a summer cheese-share with the Cosmic Creamery running out of Turnip Rock Farm.
Our local sweet things include Anderson's Maple Syrup from Cumberland, WI and honey from Minneapoils-based Bare Honey. Ms. Marty's local cottage industry from Richfield, MN provides us with a variety of jams and jellies.
Spices come from Frontier Co-op in Iowa for our house made Mischief Maker Chai, our kitchen, and our bakery. They've got many fair trade and organic spices and herbs for us.
Our wheat and corn tortillas come from a local bakery - La Perla. All our other bread is baked in house.
Our Beverage Buddies
We work with two local coffee roasters: Roastery 7 in Brooklyn Center, MN and True Stone Coffee Roasters in St. Paul, MN who have been our main sources since our start up in 2006!
We also partner with friends from the north - one near our family's wilderness get away in Grand Marais - FIKA coffee. We hope you'll connect with them in Lutsen whenever you head up the shore! We also offer City Girl Coffee - an all female-based coffee business connected to Alakef coffee in Duluth.
We source our tea from the Tea Source in St. Paul, MN. We blend and brew the one-of-a-kind Mischief Maker Chai in house.
Our cold drinks case is filled with locals too: Spring Grove sodas from Spring Grove, MN, Whistler Sodas from Forest Lake, MN and WISCO sodas and sparkling water from Viroqua, WI. We stock a collection of Columbia Gorge organic smoothies and juices from a family run orchard in WA. We offer a local Kombucha as well.
We source our cider from Wescott Orchards, who sources apples regionally with lots of care, and from a sweet little Northfield MN orchard, Fireside. We also love to connect with the Happy Hills orchard of Visselli, MN at the Kingfield Farmers' Market.
Partners in Community Building
Our Networks include: KingField Neighborhood Association, Lyndale Neighborhood Association, 38th Street United, The Metro Independent Business Alliance, Main Street Alliance, RAISE/Restaurant Opportunities Centers United.
We also share our talents and resources with many organizations that share our vision for a world that cares for all people and our awesome earth. Yearly events and ongoing relationships help us stay connected to our neighborhood schools (Lyndale, Green Central, Justice Page, Lake Country, South High, Washburn, Southwest, Hiawatha Prep), churches, and care-giving organizations such as The Aliveness Project, Youth Link, Nicollet Square Housing, Zoom House, Open Streets MPLS, the Greenway Coalition, the Jungle Theater, the Children’s Theatre, and many others. Together we're building a stronger Minneapolis.
We work with Sunrise Bank, a neighborhood bank that supports the Minneapolis community and urban development, and have received mentoring from their partners at the Metropolitan Consortium of Community Developers. Our phone services are through another local little guy, Velocity and we keep trying to move to fiber optics network connections through USI a Minneapolis based company.
Aspen helps us with our organics composting. And we always give a shout-out to Randy's Sanitation for being a pioneer in the Organics Composting movement and who got us started! We've received great support from Hennepin County as well to build our recycling and composting systems. We’re glad our recyclables go to EUREKA - a partner in materials management!
We source our compostable to-go containers and paper ware from COMPOST-IT-ALL they'd be glad to help your organization or business do the same!
Our domains are hosted by Hover.com - a great option for small businesses! Check them out HERE.