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Adrian Sanders never stops churning out new butter flavors.
When everybody else was baking sourdough, Adrian Sanders made butter. The former graphic designer had started working in auto parts prior to the onset of the pandemic and knew he needed a hobby that indulged his creativity—and aversion to exact measurements—more than flour and water ever could. Now, he sells butter in flavors like cacio e pepe and blackberry sage at stores and markets around the region as A Butter Place.
Sanders grew up in the margarine era, only learning to cook as an adult, so a TikTok video on making honeycomb butter impressed him. “I kind of bust in like Doc Brown, ‘Marty, it’s the butter!’” He started researching, talking to friends whose grandparents used to make butter, trying different methods. Finally he landed on his own butter style—something that could work as a recipe shortcut or finishing touch, as well as taste great on its own.
Sanders was not deterred when he learned that the reason there were so few butter makers at local farmers markets was because of its strict health code regulations. “I end up, like, often biting off more than I can chew, but then getting through it, coming out on the other side better,” he says.
He started selling the butter at pop-ups in 2023 and used a Kiva microloan to fund a small-batch pasteurizer. In his Queen Anne commissary kitchen, Sanders runs four or five gallons of cream from Twin Brook Creamery through the pasteurizer, then churns it in a giant Hobart mixer.
Sanders makes 80 or 90 pounds of butter each month, most of which he sells in four-ounce tubs at farmers markets and at DeLaurenti, in the Pike Place Market. The flavors rotate seasonally through options like hot buttered rum, which he recommends using to glaze a spiral ham, and peach pie butter, which works as well on roasted squash as it does on pork chops.
“Every flavor, I wanted it to be something you couldn’t get,” he says. He remembers learning in art school that if he thought of an idea, someone else probably had, too. So Sanders makes sure to always add something extra to his flavor ideas, to take them a step beyond.
He turned his Old Bay inspiration into Cajun miso (designed for fish, great on potatoes, says Sanders), and adds in a bit of schmaltz to complete the “What’s Up, Chicken Butt-er,” which is his play on the 11 herbs and spices from a very different Sanders. Biscuits might be the obvious vehicle for that butter, but Sanders started this as an outlet for his creativity and never makes the easy choice—he suggests trying it on popcorn.
