Butter of the Month: Trader Joe’s Cultured Salted Butter

Unboring Rating – 3 cows out of 4 cows

“We the best music!”

“…Another one.”

DJ Khaled just dropped his new promo for Trader Joe’s. Really? No, but the two might as well have teamed up because both have a strong track record of making hits. That’s just about where the similarities end. One wears million dollar jewelry, drives six-figure cars, and pops bottles of champagne while the other wears “no frills” packaging, bags its own groceries, and pops overpriced brands like bloated balloons.

Yes, consumer packaged foods Brand Managers beware: Trader Joe’s is coming for your market share! Trader Joe’s made private label “cool” long before Archer Farms and Kirkland Signature crashed the private label party.

Once upon a time, the supermarket brand (a.k.a. private label) was the last thing you wanted to buy. The packaging’s label was in black and white. The font was about as unsexy a font as you could imagine with clumsy bold type. Private label was synonymous with poor quality. Images of forsaken canned brownish green peas and Brussels sprouts come to mind. Brand Managers had it good. They laughed and scoffed at private label the way the top dog campus fraternity mocks the underdog in a National Lampoon’s movie.

It was a great run: Toilet paper, paper towels, canned goods, frozen dinners, soap, razors, cigarettes…you name it. Every major U.S. Brand could charge the American consumer a premium for the price of their branded good. Only a savage would buy private label. “Leave private label to the philistines!” Brands chuckled.

Contrast that to the present day: “Everyday low pricing” has become an important way for hard-working families to manage household costs. Club Stores offer deep discounts via bulk purchases and the “Dollar” Stores offer similar discounts for select merchandise (i.e. products that still make money if sold at $1 per unit). The prevailing household behavior of saving money on low priced goods is now every Brand’s worst nightmare come true.

The enabler for everyday low pricing is private label. The mechanics behind this require a detour. Let’s just say that branded consumer packaged goods companies made a crucial misstep over the last twenty years. They let their internal Finance organizations convince them to sell all their Property, Plant, and Equipment. Why not have a co-manufacturer produce the product for us? Why deal with the expensive costs of maintaining your own manufacturing plant? It sounded sensible on paper. What happened in reality set the stage for private label to go on one of the most epic comeback runs in history—the kind of run that would be worthy of a National Lampoon’s film.

The advantages these companies and their brands had was: (1) High Barrier to Entry due to the cost of purchasing a Manufacturing Plant and (2) Technological/Manufacturing/Proprietary Know-How. When those companies abandoned their own manufacturing facilities they left behind those Plants and that Know-How (via the Plant workers that stayed after the Plant closed down). The most well documented example of this is Chobani. The company’s founder, Hamdi Ulukaya, purchased a closed former Kraft Foods yogurt plant and trained the factory workers to make Greek-style yogurt instead. Later that same Greek Yogurt category single-handedly destroyed Kraft Foods’ Jell-O business as health conscious moms switched from powdered pudding mix to wholesome Greek yogurt. Suddenly, there were manufacturing plants that weren’t being utilized with well-trained factory workers that had previously manufactured high-quality products for national brands and their companies. This enabled businesses looking to introduce new products (a.k.a. Category New Entrants) in the same categories to compete. Previously, these New Entrants would’ve needed to purchase their own Plant and train their own workers.

Private label began to close the quality gap between their products and their branded competitors’. And suddenly, that “no-frills” salad dressing and canned corn started tasting pretty darn good. At the same time, co-manufacturer’s also started learning how to make quality products too. Once their contracts ended, they put up the proverbial ‘We’re open for business!’ signs. Add Free Trade and Globalization to the mix. This dynamic is why private label products have, in some cases, better quality than leading brands do.

Why are we dedicating so much time to this topic and the back story?

Because Trader Joe’s has a private label butter that is made in France. Let us repeat that again.

Trader Joe’s has a private label butter that is made in France…the same France that riots whenever there is a butter shortage. You know the butter has to be darn good if the country shuts down due to a lack of butter! Even more insane is the fact that the butter is produced in Brittany, France. Chefs associate anything food-related with Brittany to mean super high-quality.

The Brittany Coast is famous for fleur de sel (the eponymous sea salt) and langoustines. Thanks to Trader Joe’s, Brittany can now also be famous for private label Butter. Sounds absurd, right? With that back story, however, we can begin to wrap our heads around why it’s possible for Trader Joe’s to offer a French imported Cultured European-Style Private Label Butter.

We have to give some credit to Trader Joe’s when it comes to private label too. They’ve been in the game long before the secular changes we described took place.

While Trader Joe’s didn’t create the concept of Private Label products, the company certainly was an early adopter and established that private label quality could rival (and exceed) that of branded products. According the company’s website:

“…in 1972, Joe introduced a total game changer for Trader Joe’s…Granola. Not just any granola, though. This was the first private label Trader Joe’s product. After granola, we never looked back.

Focusing on private label (products with “Trader Joe’s” name on them) simplified a lot of things, and removed a lot of costs – no more slotting fees, marketing fees, middlemen fees…We passed along those savings to our customers (still do), because the value of Value is invaluable. And to us, “Value” means offering the best quality products for the best, everyday prices.”

Just like Brittany, Trader Joe’s doesn’t let us down. This butter delivers on every key attribute we love about butter: taste, texture, and appearance. This butter has a very dense creamy texture that hits your palate with a nice burst of salinity before transitioning to an intensely satisfying buttery flavor and finishing with a pleasantly smooth tang of cultured cream. This is a butter that works with any application: for spreading, for baking, for pan-frying, for sautéing, for emulsifying, etc. Eggs and toast/bread are always the two ways to appreciate a well-crafted butter. We couldn’t find the exact butterfat percentage listed on the company’s website, but our taste buds tell us this is higher than the standard 82%.

Like all Trader Joe’s private label items, this butter is distinctively branded as a Trader Joe’s product which conveys “quality more in line with leading branded products, but sold at a great price.” The packaging is in a bricks format and has a light blue color reminiscent of the aqua shores of Brittany with nautical rope-like patterns.

We don’t always believe the hype, but this butter is as advertised. Thus, we are awarding Trader Joe’s Cultured Sea Salted Butter with a three cow rating.

Key Takeaway

Trader Joe’s has done it again with its Trader Jacques’ Cultured Sea Salted Butter. It’s even one-upped the competition by importing its Cultured Sea Salted Butter from the “birthplace” of sea salt: Brittany’s Coast (Take that Branded Butter!).

In the meantime, we will be on the look-out for Trader Joe’s private label white truffles made in Alba, Italy…and that DJ Khaled endorsement promo “We the best private label.”

We do not receive any form of compensation for our reviews by any of the butter brands we feature. The views expressed in our blog are solely based on our own opinions.