Cream of the crop – couple churning out butter that’s taking the food scene by storm
Pop-up supper club pair now supply top hotels, restaurants and delis with their cultured product, writes Sean Murphy
Scotland’s food and drink scene is filled with entrepreneurs of every stripe – from farmers seeking extra income to professionals tired of the rat race, and even celebrities using their star status to fulfil whatever passion has taken their fancy.
Usually, their chosen products are trending drinks like craft cider and small-batch gin or fashionable foods like cheeses, chutneys and even hot sauce. However, a pair of enterprising foodies based in Edinburgh have decided to do things a little differently.
“We’ve bet it all on butter,” Nick Sinclair said, when asked about the exciting new business that’s seen its products listed in some of Edinburgh’s most prestigious hotels, restaurants and delis. “My wife and I are both heavily into food, we love butter and had been looking for a way to make our passion our job.”
Having worked in London at various financial institutions for more than a decade, Nick, who is originally from Inverness, decided to move back to Scotland after meeting wife Hilary.
He said: “We originally set up and ran a successful pop-up restaurant in our house, called Stockbridge Social Club, in 2016.”
After spending two years running
dinners for hundreds of guests, Nick and Hilary quickly realised that the thought of taking the Supper Club to the next level and opening a restaurant didn’t fill them with joy.
It was only after a trip to see friends in Australia, that the pair, impressed by local small-batch artisan cultured butter they discovered there, realised that this was something they could create themselves.
Cultured butter is made using live bacteria, similar to yoghurt.
Nick said: “When we got back we started testing many different flavours of butter and various techniques of production for the cultured butters – thankfully we had many willing taste testers in the form of our Supper Club guests.”
After a period of experimentation they decided to stop the Supper Clubs and focus on butter,
Nick said: “The Edinburgh Butter Co was born in 2018 – initially we soft launched to our distribution list of diners but it wasn’t long before we realised that we might be on to something.”
With Nick still working full time, Hilary, the more experienced of the two when it comes to cooking – having trained at Ballymaloe in Ireland – initially took the lead on production, churning the butter in the kitchen before driving around Edinburgh delivering one or two sticks to the people who had agreed to buy some. It wasn’t long before some more exciting potential customers began to take notice.
Hilary said: “Very quickly we started getting enquiries from Edinburgh-based delis and restaurants. The most prominent and one of the earliest was The Balmoral hotel, who really allowed us to grow quickly. We owe a lot to their willingness to support us.”
After a few months it became clear that the cultured butter was their lead product and that demand was such that they would have to drop the other flavours. Now stocked in restaurants such as Contini Canonball and Kyloe, as well as delis such as Weigh To Go and Craigies Farm Shop, demand shows no sign of slowing.
Nick said: “We’ve grown from 0kg a week to around 70kg in just over a year, which is incredible, but we’ve had to be very careful to ensure that we can scale slowly, retaining the quality of the product.
“It’s a rare thing to be making cultured butter in Scotland at the moment but we have the resources to compete with the high-quality French imports. The difference is we’re local, there is no need for any great Scottish restaurant, cafe or deli to be importing French butter, we’re right here.”