From her family's kitchen to farmer's markets; grocery store shelves to a lucrative e-commerce site, Abby Kircher has spent the last five years cultivating Abby's Better into the perfect, all-natural snack.
Kircher, who was recently named to Charlotte's Inno Under 25 list, began Abby's Better in 2015 when she was just 15 years old. Prior to starting the company, Kircher said she was overweight and wanted to make changes to positively impact her overall health by focusing on ingredient labels.
"I knew I needed to make a change in not only how I ate but how I treated my body, in general," she said. "One of may favorite foods was peanut butter... But what I was eating had a ton of artificial sweeteners, peanut oils and general ingredients that I couldn't even pronounce."
From there, Kircher decided to use her family's kitchen to experiment with different nut and natural sweetener combinations like cashews, coconut, honey, almond, dates and pecans to create her own all-natural nut butters.
"I realized Abby's Better was about a lot more than nut better," she said. "It was about creating a clean-label snack that could be a one-stop shop for healthy [eating]."
The startup has grown tenfold since its inception, moving its operations into a manufacturing facility in 2018 and cultivating a massive online following with more than $400,000 in e-commerce sales since the beginning of 2020. Kircher said she began to shift focus away from retail sales to online in January and never looked back.
"Nut butters are a naturally slower-moving product, and we wanted an outlet where we could crank out products quickly and create a family and a home for our customers," she said. "We made the shift, and it became a wild, perfect storm when Covid hit, because you had more people online and more people looking at our ads."
Though online sales are the main focus, the products are available in a variety of retailers throughout the Southeast and Midwest regions, such as Wegman's, Whole Foods, Lowes Foods, Meijer and Jewel-Osco.
Currently, Abby's Better sells 11 nut butters flavors, including protein-infused varieties, as well as a nut-free flavor, Chocolate Sunflower Seed. All of the butters are peanut-free, gluten-free and Paleo-friendly. Kircher said it's tough to choose a favorite, but she finds herself reaching for Pumpkin Spice Pecan and French Toast Pecan the most.
"French Toast Pecan is truly next-level," she said.
Additionally, Abby's Better has launched a line of grab-and-go Nut Butter Snack Bites that come in four flavors. And they're working on a new product launch for early next year, which Kircher thinks people will love.
"It's a plant-based and shelf-stable dough-to-go," she said. "I’ve always been a big cookie dough person, and we've been in the facility working on recipes... It’s a line we expect to do really well."
As for what keep Kircher motivated and moving forward? She said it's, without a doubt, everyone involved with Abby's Better.
"It's important to decide who you're going to listen to and to surround yourself with people who have the expertise and knowledge that I don't," she said. "I'm learning every day."
