Many of you are loyal Butter Braid® Pastry fans. You’ve been following the company and the founding family since the very beginning, so you know a lot about the brand. For instance, you know that the company was started in the small, farming community of West Bend, Iowa by Ken and Marlene Banwart; that each of our pastries are braided by hand with love; and that, together with our Dealer Network, we’ve helped raise over $360 million for thousands of great causes. However, whether you’re a long-time fan or just discovering Butter Braid® Pastries for the first time, there’s always something new to learn!
Here are some fun facts you (probably) didn’t know about your favorite fundraising pastry.
1. Butter Braid® Pastries were featured on two different television shows
The Butter Braid brand and its parent company, Country Maid, Inc., were featured on an episode of How It’s Made in 2014 and Manufacturing Marvels in 2015. The episodes showcased the unique production process involved in the manufacturing of Butter Braid Pastries. You can still view these segments by going to the Our Story page of the Butter Braid brand website.
2. The conference rooms at our headquarters have a hidden history…
Butter Braid® Pastries weren’t always made in the high-tech manufacturing facility that they are today. Ken and Marlene first started producing their famous pastries in the basement of their family home in 1991. Once the business outgrew the basement, the Banwart family renovated their two-car garage into a new production area. By the end of 1992, the business was moved to a renovated building in town called “The Old Hatchery”. A few years later, the business would move one final time to its current location. But, to remember where we came from, we named each of our conference rooms after the previous three Butter Braid Pastry manufacturing locations: the “Basement”, the “Garage”, and the “Hatchery”.
3. Butter Braid® Pastries didn’t originally have a filling
It’s true! The first pastries Ken and Marlene sold at the local farmer’s market didn’t have any filling. After the Banwarts started selling and marketing the pastries on a larger scale in 1991, Ken came up with the idea of adding delicious fillings to the product which are now the hallmark of every Butter Braid Pastry.
4. The pastries were sold in over 50 retail stores until 2002
When Ken and Marlene initially started the business in 1991, they sold their pastries to local grocery stores. By 1992, the pastries were in more than 50 stores all over the state of Iowa. In 2002, we made the bold move to make Butter Braid® Pastries a fundraising-only brand in order to support schools and organizations all across the country and to fulfill the brand’s mission to “Share the Good”.
5. Our most popular flavors? Cinnamon and Strawberry & Cream Cheese
Cinnamon has been an overwhelming crowd favorite for many years. With its thick, gooey cinnamon filling inside layers of buttery, flaky dough, it’s no wonder people love this pastry. However, in the last few years, Strawberry & Cream Cheese has overtaken our Cinnamon pastry by a slim margin. The perfect balance of tangy cream cheese and sweet strawberries nestled in layers of buttery dough is what makes Strawberry & Cream Cheese a best seller!
Whatever your favorite flavor, get yours at a fundraiser near you! Just enter your zip code and get in contact with your local Butter Braid® Pastry dealer here: https://myfundraisingplace.com/dealers.
6. Have you met the Pastry Pals?
In 2022, a fun and friendly new addition rolled into the Butter Braid® brand: the Pastry Pals! These cheerful characters are made from packages of our products and bring a lot of personality to our social media feeds and website. Whether they’re cheering on a school fundraiser, tagging along on a field trip, or enjoying a sunny picnic with the family, the Pastry Pals help bring our brand to life.
Each Pastry Pal has its own charm and character, helping to tell the story of how our hand-braided pastries connect communities and bring smiles to every event. Keep an eye out…you’ll never know where they might show up next!
7. Much more than twelve flavors
You might know and love our current product lineup of 12 delicious Butter Braid® Pastries and Pastry Rolls, but did you know we’ve had several unique flavors over the years that are now retired?
Our flavor journey has been just as creative as it has been tasty. While Cinnamon and Strawberry & Cream Cheese are longtime favorites, some past editions of our pastries include Almond Crème, Peaches & Cream Cheese, Maple Nut, and Double Chocolate as well as several others that longtime fans might still fondly remember. In fact, over the years, we’ve had a total of 17 different flavors of braided pastries.
8. We’ve taken our fundraising program to new heights by adding the online store
In 2019, we expanded our fundraising program to include an online store and Group Leader Portal, making the fundraising process easier than ever!
The online store allows sellers to promote their own, personal store link via email, text, or social media. Supporters can order and pay online using a credit card or mobile wallet. With the Group Leader Portal, group leaders can tally, review, and submit their order forms online, meaning they can spend less time managing money and paper forms. It’s been a real game-changer for groups looking to raise funds all across the country.
9. We hand braid enough pastries to cross Iowa (Twice)!
Every year, the team hand braids an incredible 825 miles of pastries. That’s enough to stretch across the state of Iowa two and a half times! To make those pastries, more than 23,000 lbs. of pastry dough gets mixed every day. That weights almost the same as an armored car or a small humpback whale.
