I’m a liberal arts guy – not just in spirit but also education, having studied History at Vassar College. During those four years I was introduced to many new ideas, including one by classmate Lee Zalben: peanut butter can solve all problems. Lee put his hypothesis to test in 1998 via Peanut Butter & Co, a small retail shop which has turned into a multiplatform success. One which still goes best with a glass of milk. Here’s a short interview I did with Lee.
Q: So Peanut Butter & Co started first as a NYC retail shop right? Did you always plan to do ecommerce as well? Tell us a little about its growth.
I opened the Peanut Butter & Co. sandwich shop in 1998, and the menu consisted entirely of peanut butter sandwiches, snacks, and desserts. Customers started coming in with Tupperware containers, asking to take home some of our peanut butter, so we started putting it in jars for them to take home. Tourists from out of town who had bought our peanut butter during their visit to NYC started calling us when their jars became empty, and we realized we needed to figure out a way to keep them supplied, so we added e-commerce to our websitewww.ilovepeanutbutter.com. That was in 1999 – we were in fact one of the first food companies to offer e-commerce to consumers. The sandwich shop and e-commerce are a very small part of our business now however – most of our sales come of grocery stores, supermarkets, and specialty and natural food stores.
Read the full interview