The first thing Ruth Butterfield baked was a pot pie. That was in 1987 when her mother would carefully slice apples and roll out buttery crust for the family’s holidays. That’s when Butterfield decided she was going to make pies, sweet and savory, just like the ones her mom used to bake for her.
She didn’t head to culinary school or even a professional kitchen after graduating from high school. Instead, Butterfield spent 10 years working a 9-5 corporate job before she shifted her focus back to cooking.
In 1999, she started a catering company and pre-made meal service out of her home. She began to sell some of her products on Artizone, a now-closed online specialty food shopping community, from 2012-2015.
With enough word-of-mouth, Butterfield was able to expand her catering and meal-service business into a full-time job.
By 2014, Butterfield Gourmet, operating out of a Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church kitchen, was open.
Butterfield Gourmet is a specialty foods shop with a niche in home-crafted sweet and savory pies. Butterfield’s specialty is her handcrafted “Home Sweet Home” Pot Pie.
“Our pie crust is kind of famous,” Butterfield says. “It’s all hand-made. We don’t use any kind of machinery at all. A little bit of love goes into every pie.”
Along with pot pies, Butterfield Gourmet also offers a variety of dessert dishes, pastries, soups, sandwiches, salads, baked goods and quiches as part of weekly menus published on the company’s website.
A few of the dishes at Butterfield Gourmet are seasonal and are only available during the winter or summer. Butterfield even prepares a special menu during Chinese New Year to celebrate some of her Asian heritage.
During the summer, she prepares a special “picnic menu” once a month. In the past, items have included dishes such as cold fried chicken, potato salad and chocolate cake.
Butterfield Gourmet recently entered a partnership with Walmart GoLocal making the pot pies available for purchase on the Walmart website. Butterfield hopes the new partnership will increase her pot pie distribution even more.
“People ask me all the time, ‘How do you it? What is the secret to your pie crust?’” Butterfield says. “And I always say 10,000 hours.”
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