Page 15 - MarketTimesFebruary2016
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  Market Times • February 2016
PROFILE
Utta Nutta is taking the market by storm
  TEACHER Katie Sargent was inspired by her son’s love of peanut butter and her concern for the environment to create a new product — Utta Nutta — which is now a firm favourite on Salisbury market.
Such is the success of her palm oil-free peanut butter that delicatessens and other food outlets have started taking orders.
And she was even invited on to the popular TV programme Loose Women to speak about her creation.
Katie, 43, an art teacher at a secondary school, said: “I didn’t mean to start this business. It just happened.”
Katie’s son and her former partner both adore peanut butter and were constantly tucking into peanut butter sandwiches.
“We always had the palm oil-free variety of peanut butter because of the devastating impact the use of palm oil has had on rain forests, particularly in Borneo where the orang-utans are so badly affected by the loss of their habitat,” she said.
The shop-bought palm oil-free peanut butter was much less tasty than the more popular type, so Katie decided to have a go at making a tastier version.
“I experimented and added some tasty natural ingredients like honey,” she said.
She uses the finest quality South American peanuts, which she roasts herself. There is no added sugar but natural products like Himalayan salt and honey give her invention a natural sweet flavour.
When friends and family tried her peanut butter they enjoyed it so much they asked if they could buy it, so she began thinking about making a business out of it.
Katie decided to register the name — Utta Nutta — to give her that all-important push to get started.
She gained the necessary health and safety and food hygiene accreditation and then took the plunge on her home market in Salisbury and at food fairs.
“I took 100 pots of Utta Nutta and sold out,” she said. The same happened at the next food fair and she has done equally well at a number of local markets.
Two-and-a-half years after she made her first pot of peanut butter, Katie has cut down from full to part-time teaching and she took on a unit in January where she manufactures the product.
She gained a Government-sponsored start-up loan that paid for a new mixer since the basic domestic mixers she was using kept breaking.
“The business is going really well and I am getting more and more delicatessens and similar
outlets wanting to stock Utta Nutta,” Katie said. She is expanding her product range to include cashew nut butter, and her son, who is now studying marketing at university, can’t wait to get
in on the act and help grow the business.
But she has no intention of abandoning
Salisbury market.
“It has been a fantastic place to start a
business,” Katie said. “I have built up a loyal following, but it is also my shop window. I can give out tasters and people say they like the taste and buy the product. I have got so many leads and orders from my market stall,” she added. “I would recommend it to anyone as the ideal place to test and launch a new product.”
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