Fat Toad Farm Sold to Butterfly Bakery of Vermont

Fats Toad Farm, a Brookfield firm that makes a preferred goat milk caramel, has been bought to Butterfly Bakery of Vermont, a sizzling sauce firm that can manufacture the caramel at its facility in Barre.

Fats Toad founders Judith Irving, Steve Reid, and Irving’s daughter Calley Hastings began their caramel enterprise in 2007 in an outbuilding at their dwelling, the place they as soon as used to maintain goats themselves and make goat cheese. In late 2015, they bought their goats to Ayers Brook Dairy in Randolph and used milk from Vermont Creamery to make the caramel sauce.

As they developed the enterprise, the three struggled to compete for shelf area inside the nationwide grocery store distribution system. They in the end determined to cut back and located success utilizing native distributors and mail order to promote their caramel.

The sale went via on August 24, the corporate introduced this week on Fb.

“We’re so excited for this new starting and know that the Fats Toad Farm neighborhood is in good fingers,” the founders mentioned in a submit.

Butterfly Bakery of Vermont makes baked items, sizzling sauce and mustard, and in addition packages meals for different small producers, in line with the corporate’s web site. Proprietor and founder Claire Georges began the bakery in 2003; in 2014, she employed her first staff and began making sizzling sauces that the corporate says are actually bought around the globe.

Butterfly Bakery says the entire maple syrup and chili peppers utilized in its merchandise are grown inside 200 miles of its Barre cannery.

Fats Toad has gained a faithful following with its inventive and high-end array of caramel sauces. The caramel will be discovered on Amazon and on an array of smaller specialty meals web sites. The Maynard, Mass., brewery Amory’s Tomb, which sells Fats Toad’s salted bourbon caramel on-line, advises customers to pair the caramel with nutty alpine and gouda cheeses; drizzle it over grilled stone fruit or bacon; or spoon it over candied nuts.

Fats Toad was named the Vermont Small Enterprise Administration’s family-owned enterprise of the 12 months in 2018, and took dwelling honors from the Good Meals Basis awards in San Francisco in 2019 and 2020. Its labels characteristic art work by the household’s Brookfield neighbor Ed Koren, an artist who has labored as a cartoonist for the New Yorker journal for 60 years.

In Could 2021, Fats Toad gained a $20,495 Northeast Dairy Enterprise Innovation grant to create and market an interactive digital tour of a close-by goat farm and its manufacturing course of.

“Properly, if the goats are completely satisfied then I’m completely satisfied,” one fan wrote on Fb in response to Fats Toad’s announcement. “You’ve made us smile through the years.”