Butter than Ever with Rachel Klein | October 2024 Digital Cover Release

Butter than Ever: Rachel Klein makes healthy taste delicious

For most brides, a wedding day is full of hairspray, makeup, tulle, dancing, extended family, in-laws, friends, maybe some cake. A new entrepreneurial endeavor usually doesn’t make the list, but in 2014 it did for Rachel Klein when she provided her homemade almond butter as a wedding favor for her 300 guests. One sample and these folks were hooked, raving so much for the taste that Klein turned it into a business that now, ten years later, serves grocery stores in forty-eight states. 

We had the opportunity to sit down with Klein to talk entrepreneurship, creativity, mentors, and, of course, almond butter.

Polina Osherov: So you have this entrepreneurial streak. Is this part of your familial background, or are you the black sheep?

Rachel Klein: Actually, my dad is an entrepreneur. We are the same in so many ways. He does real estate development, and I grew up seeing him in the entrepreneurial world, always going down paths that didn't exist yet. If there's a block, he's going to figure out a way to get around it. It felt like there was nothing he couldn't do. 

PO: What did he think of you starting Revival? Was he cautioning you at all?

RK: I don't think anybody took it seriously when I first started. It still felt like one of my many moods, one of my many things that I was trying on for size. I grew up dancing, and my original plan was to be a dancer in downtown Chicago or New York City. But while I was in college, I realized that wasn’t what I actually wanted to do. 

So I switched to exercise science, thinking that I would be a physical therapist. I did my internships, and I was like, this is suffocating, I'm just in an office wearing khaki pants and a polo. This is awful. Then I started doing massage therapy while I was in school and got certified as a Pilates instructor. 

All to say I graduated college having zero idea what I was going to do with my life. So when I started making almond butter, everybody was just like, there she goes again.

PO: You just woke up one day wanting to sell almond butter? Where did the idea come from? 

RK: My dad was an Ironman triathlete and really into fitness. Every morning as his breakfast, he would eat peanut butter and a banana before he went out on a ride or do his workout. I was like, dad, I don't think peanut butter is actually as good for you as you think it is. Most people don’t know that it's inflammatory, has high mold possibilities, and is a legume, which is hard for your body to digest. So I started trying different almond butters. I was like, man, this is disgusting. Then I decided, I'll just start making my own, and it'll taste better. I love making things from scratch and trying to find a better way to do anything. 

Fast-forward a few months. I'm about to get married, and I decide I’ll make my almond butter as a wedding favor. So I spent the week before my wedding making batches of it and filling hundreds of these little tiny jars. 

Following the wedding so many people were like, You made that? It was so good. You should sell it. And that's the kind of thing people tell you, but you don't actually do. I had no experience in food or business, but I just decided I'd play around and see what happens. And then Revival was born, and here we are.

PO: It's funny how these things happen. What was it in you that made you think, I should actually go for this?

RK: You have to have this crazy kind of confidence that is somewhat delusional. I've always thought, why not me? And that's truly defined the entire journey of Revival. 

PO: Talk a little bit about securing mentors. I do think that people who are as charismatic and charming as you are have potentially an easier time of getting the folks that are otherwise too busy to be open. What's an introvert to do? 

RK: You have to be totally shameless. This is what happened with Jeni of Jeni’s Ice Cream: she was somebody I looked up to so much in the industry because she's creative. She was my pinnacle of a mentor, and I was at this big conference and she was there too. I was like, oh, my God, how do I talk to her? I was so nervous. 

If you're an introvert, put on a persona. Be Carrie from Sex and the City. And so I just went up and was like, Hi, Jeni. I just wanted to say thank you so much for your time. I'm so impressed by everything that you've built. I would love to spend more time with you.

And of course, I gave her my almond butter. It's nice to give them something; it kind of brings the barriers down a little bit. And then you just have to shamelessly follow up, too. If you let that opportunity go, it's gone. You just have to get outside of your body and do the thing that makes you want to throw up, and that's probably going to be the best next step. 

PO: I saw recently that you all are pulling your product out of Walmart. Could you speak a little bit about your experience of getting in Walmart and why you've decided to do something different at this point?

RK: Yeah! It was 2019–I had two toddlers and was pregnant with a third. I’ve done the local thing, driving everything around Indy myself, making it all by hand. I had a small team that would help me out, but to be honest, it was very exhausting.

I went to this big trade show called Natural Products Expo East. Long story short, I met the Walmart buyer there and she loved it. It was quite the learning curve and a great overall experience, but also incredibly hard for a small operation like Revival. As I looked to the future of the brand, I realized that it wasn’t in alignment with me or with where I wanted to see the brand going with our consumer base. And so, I took the risk and bowed out. My buyer was wonderful about it, and actually let me walk away with a clean slate. 

So, that's where I find myself now, as I explore the next steps and where I want it to go. I want change. I want to see myself thriving in this season in my life. Revival has brought me a lot of joy. I'm looking to the next season of my life and thinking, how do I want Revival to play a part in this?

PO: I love listening to you talk about creativity as a function of entrepreneurship. How do we talk better about the difference between creatives and more “traditional” entrepreneurs?

RK: This is something I think about quite a lot because there's this middle space of creative entrepreneurs. I think that people in entrepreneurship are valuable. They're the ones that help make the thing go round. But I think it's the founder that's usually that creative entrepreneur that has to think differently. I came into this with no experience, and I feel like that's one of my greatest assets in some ways is that I came in and I was able to say, I don't know the system. I don't know what rules I'm breaking. And that's how you create something that didn't exist before, and that is so valuable. But then there also needs to be an infrastructure that supports that crazy-thinking creative entrepreneur. 

What I wish there was and what I would love to potentially do one day is create an infrastructure to support creative entrepreneurs that says, you don't have all of these other things figured out, but you've done this one thing that's so valuable, that's intangible. I feel like I wish that there was a little bit more of a middle ground to support creative entrepreneurs.

PO: That's such a great point.

RK: I think the part that I feel the most passionate about right now in my life is just sharing that piece of my truth. I've been the Revival almond butter lady for ten years. I'm more than that. Just like you're more than Pattern. We are so many things. And I feel like oftentimes we get stuck in that identity. 

But it's like: I'm a creative, I'm an entrepreneur, I want to speak more, I want to write more, I want to be more of a community connector. And that gets me so much more pumped up. And really, those are the things that I always loved about Revival. Plus putting something clean that I believe in out in the world. I’m proud of that and I don't care about being the biggest brand in the nation. I don't need to be. 

Want to be a part of shaping Indiana’s creative future? Buy a ticket to this year’s Creative Economy Summit!

Stay Connected

This story was made possible thanks to the generous support of our friends at Life in Indy.