It’s not often you can call chefs work-shy, but when Thomas Straker was asked to push out more food content on his TikTok channel during COVID, it inadvertently inspired the launch of disruptive dairy brand All Things Butter.

“We were testing out a lot of videos and Thomas had a good following,” says co-founder Toby Hopkinson. “He was quite frankly being a bit lazy and was meant to be doing an all-singing, all-dancing dish for his social video, but he made a wild garlic butter on toast and it went viral crazy. I’d like to say there was a grand masterplan.”

Head chef Straker, who runs London-based Straker’s Restaurant, subsequently published 25 videos across one month which incorporated flavoured butter into his recipes and grew his social following by 1 million, while the channel’s content has garnered nearly 50 million likes. After four months, the duo looked into creating a product together. “The stars aligned,” says Hopkinson. “We had stumbled across it and ran with it.”

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Hopkinson, previously on the founding team at razor maker Harry's and then head of growth at CBD drinks brand Trip, quit his role in August 2023 as the pair set about launching their challenger brand.

“Butter has fallen into a category that it’s for toasting and baking. For us, the viral videos showed a versatility for it to be used in cooking,” says Hopkinson.

“When I was dreaming of the idea nearly two years ago I felt there was a lack of investment into getting people to cook with butter. It had a pretty bad rep for 20 years when the margarine alternatives came in.

“It was like butter is high in saturated fat and essentially gave you heart disease. It was quite brutal the stuff that went out in the late 1990s.”

Their product is manufactured by Brue Valley Farm in Somerset, whose generational family have been farming for 500 years, with traditional methods including twice churning the butter to enhance the creaminess.

“It was funny going down there to a multi-generational farming family with our slightly wacky packaging,” recalls Hopkinson. “We told them the narrative of where we had come to and the opportunity to add some excitement to the category and they loved it. Other farms thought we were jokers from London.”

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In its first 10 weeks, All Things Butter sold 100,000 blocks as it set out to make headway into a ￡1.6bn category led by the likes of Flora and Lurpak.

Their initial plan had been to shy away from retailers and create a stir with online sales. But since November, the co-founders have secured listings into Ocado (OCDO.L), Planet Organic and Milk & More with their flavours including garlic and herb and chilli.