The Butter Boom: Why Flavoured Butter Is the Summer Spread Everyone’s Talking About

Last month we wrote about how the viral Dubai Chocolate and its effect on the ice cream industry. So, this month we are back with another viral trend but this time one that affects the dairy industry.

Who remembers the viral TikTok about butter boards? Move over, charcuterie. Well, it hasn’t slowed down and it’s not just a fad. It all started in late 2022 and has continued to influence menus and home kitchens ever since. At its peak, butter board content brought in over 950 million views on Instagram alone, according to the 2024 Instagram Trends Report. This social media sensation transformed butter from a simple spread into a canvas for culinary creativity.

Even now in 2025, flavoured butters are dominating plates this summer. And it’s no surprise when outdoor dining, barbecue season, and premium picnic culture combine, butter becomes more than just a condiment and a friend to bread. But here’s what’s more exciting: for dairy producers and small-batch innovators, this isn’t just a trend. It’s an opportunity…

A $2.5 Billion Opportunity…

The flavoured butter market is experiencing significant growth ever since the viral trend. Projections indicate that the global market will reach $2.5 billion by 2025, growing at a rate of 4.9%. What’s driving its continuous growth? Well, the interest in premium ingredients, grazing culture, growth of small-batch, local dairy brands and the rise of creators like Thomas Straker who has shown how butter has gone from social media trend to supermarket staple.

Chicken Skin Butter??….

Thomas Straker rose to mainstream attention in 2022–2023 thanks to his Instagram and TikTok series titled “All Things Butter.” In the series, he created a variety of flavoured butters – from chicken skin butter (we haven’t tried it- would you?) to miso butter, nduja butter, and truffle parmesan turning butter into a mainstream ingredient rather than a background player.

These videos got millions of views and triggered a wave of interest in small-batch, flavoured, gourmet butters, particularly among home cooks, foodies, and artisan food producers.

Marks & Spencer, Trader Joe’s, and artisanal delis across Europe have rolled out garlic confit, parmesan-truffle, honey-chilli and even mushroom butters in the past few years. We expect peak gourmet dairy sales from May to September, driven by summer get-togethers, cookouts, and general good times.

For all you dairy processors and food manufacturers, the flavoured butter trend opens new avenues for product innovation and potential market expansion. Investing in equipment like butter churns and flavour blending systems can enable the production of a diverse range of flavoured butters to meet consumer demand. So, are you getting involved?

From Separation to Spreadable: We’ve Got You Churned and Ready (lol)…

Butter that spreads like a dream starts with smart separation and we can supply the machines that make it happen from fat-rich cream to flavour-packed spreads. Whether its centrifugal separators to butter churns and pasteurisers we can help.

Check out our brand new butter processing equipment available from MW: https://www.machineryworld.com/product-category/latest-machines/product-tag/simon-freres/

References:

Celebrating 5 years of partnership: Machinery World and Simon Freres deliver cutting-edge butter processing solutions ccross the UK & Ireland

Machinery World are pleased to have been working as the Simon Freres UK & Ireland agents for the last 5 years supplying a full range of cream preparation and butter processing machinery.

Founded in 1856, Simon Freres are experts in the field of modern high-performance machines for dairy and butter industries with a range of continuous churns from 120kg to 12T per hour.

Supporting customers in over 50 countries worldwide through joint partnerships and continual development, churns can be adapted to individual requirements ensuring that butter meets consumer requirements and specification.

Simon Freres partnered with Machinery World to utilise knowledge and expertise within the UK & Ireland dairy industry and have been working to support customers new and old for the last 5 years.

If you would like to discuss any butter-making requirements, please contact sales@machineryworld.com

‘Turning off our blast freezer until summer’: how UK firms are cutting energy costs

From an ice cream factory weighing up closing for three weeks over Christmas to a bistro now only open for bookings

David Equi can’t seem to catch a break. He opened a gleaming new factory in Glasgow for his eponymous luxury ice cream business on the eve of the coronavirus pandemic and has now missed out on the cutoff for government energy support by a single day.

Faced with a sharp rise in energy costs, he plans to shut down his blast freezer – a container that rapidly cools 40 pallets of ice cream – this winter. “We’re turning that off and using our existing freezers just to save money, and will switch it back on in the summer. We’re just looking at the tiniest wee things where we can save.”

Equi is also considering closing the factory entirely for up to three weeks over Christmas to save on bills, rather than operating on a skeleton staff as usual at the business, which supplies customers from Aldi to the Gleneagles hotel.

Many businesses will have invested in long-term sustainability measures to become more energy efficient but now, faced with rising prices, firms of all sizes across the country are examining every available measure to cut their bills.

David Equi of Equi’s Ice Cream — David Equi runs an ice-cream business but missed out on the cutoff for government energy support by a day. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

The electrical retailer Currys plans to turn down the brightness of its TVs; Vivendi, the owner of the Havas advertising agency, is turning down the temperature in its offices by 1C; and 300,000 LED lights will illuminate Oxford Street this Christmas – cheaper and more efficient than standard lightbulbs.

The incentive is clear: the restaurant and pub group Mitchells & Butlers said at the end of last month that its energy bill had almost doubled to £150m on pre-pandemic costs. Alston Wholefoods, a village shop in Cumbria, has switched off its freezer and is instead using laminated pictures of products for customers to order, saving an estimated £3,000 on its annual bill.

Some small businesses fear they will be asked by the government to shut down this winter to conserve energy supplies. Others say the sudden increase in costs has left them fighting for survival.

Article from The Guardian, read the full story here.

Discover the magic inside Tetra Pak® Ingredient Dosers

Exceptional dosing accuracy and gentle handing of inclusions.

Find out how Tetra Pak refined the art of dosing with the perfect balance between the ice cream your customers will love, and the inclusions that will thrill them.

Tetra Pak® Ingredient Doser series for continuous dosing of fruit pieces, nuts, candies, and other ingredients – even sticky ingredients such as jam, cookie dough and the likes into ice cream.

With a redesigned lamella pump we greatly extended the lifetime on the wear parts.

With smart automation, we’ve made the ingredient dosers more intelligent to enable greater control and accuracy. You get more uniform product quality, less giveaway, less waste and lower costs.

Our new design assures gentle handling, enabling use of fragile ingredients and even distribution of sticky ingredients while preventing lumping and assuring consistent quality.

Further, the new design ensures safe, easy operation and maintenance – and secures food safety!

The series handles a wide capacity range, enabling ingredient flow rates from 10 – 1200 litres per/hour and units are available both in automatic and manual versions.

Official UK Distributors for Simon Frères Butter Processing Machinery

We are pleased to announce that Machinery World have been appointed official UK distributors of Simon Frères butter processing machinery.

SIMON Frères is an expert in Butter Process technology (cream treatment, churning, continuous blending, reworking, bulk packaging, distribution and melting) with solutions that are reliable, innovative and competitive.

Located in Cherbourg, in Normandy, France, SIMON FRERES was founded in 1856 and is the leading manufacturer of modern high-performance machines for dairy and butter industries. SIMON Freres is well known for:

A leading position in the field of butter equipment.
Expertise in continuous processes.
Partnering with customers with their industrial development.
Designing machines adapted to individual requirements.
A long tradition of exporting to over 50 countries.
Our professionalism and commitment to quality.

Since the manufacture of the first industrial continuous butter churn in 1955, SIMON Frères have devoted their efforts to further developing their machines and now offer the broadest range of equipment for making, reworking and packaging butter. Today their know-how is also applied to by-products such as low-fat products and special dairy spreads.

See link to all the new machines here

So how did the "99" get its name?

The ‘99’ Flake can trace the roots of its name all the way back to Italy

Nothing seems to anger nostalgic Brits quite like the fact that “99” Flakes don’t cost 99p. Except perhaps the extortionate price of Freddo chocolate bars.

Some people assume that the “99” Flake derives its name from its original cost. However, this isn’t the case.

While the origin of the “99” Flake name is still somewhat shrouded in mystery, there is apparently a logical reason for its title that has nothing to do with the price tag.

The name of the “99” Flake, an ice cream cone traditionally served with a Cadbury Flake perched inside, was reportedly inspired by Italian royalty.

It all stems back to Italian soft ice cream makers working in County Durham in the 1920s who decided to incorporate the Flake into their ice creams in order to increase interest and boost sales.

Their chosen combination proved very popular, so much so that they needed to devise a memorable name for their innovative creation.

In the days of the monarchy in Italy the King has a specifically chosen guard consisting of 99 men, and subsequently anything really special or first class was known as ‘99’ – and that is how ‘99’ Flake came by its name Cadbury states.

While the regal connection of the “99” Flake to the Italian monarchy may sound impressive, there are other theories circulating about how the ice cream obtained its name.

In 1922, a man called Stefano Arcari opened up an ice cream shop in Scotland at 99 Portobello High Street.

He would apparently break a Flake in half and then place it in the ice cream to serve to his customers, taking inspiration from the shop’s address for the ice cream’s name.

It has been a family legend for as long as I can remember that my grandad invented the ‘99’, but the problem is, we have no proof,” Tanya Arcari, Stephen’s granddaughter told the BBC.

My dad always said that my grandad broke a Flake in half – before the short ‘99’ Flakes were manufactured – and stuck it in an ice cream.
We’re not sure of the exact date he did that, but it was not long after he opened the shop in 1922.

Rudi Arcari, Stephen’s son, believes that a representative from Cadbury’s may have then taken the idea.

Others speculate that the “99” Flake was so-called to honour the i Ragazzi del 99, “the Boys of ‘99’.

They were a group of soldiers born in 1899 and so the last to enlist in the First World War.

Some streets in Italy have been named after them in commemoration.

Scottish ice cream brand Porrelli scoops fresh Asda listing

ROKK customer Porelli is celebrating after scooping an exclusive deal with Asda to stock two new ice cream flavours.

Produced on the ROKK RFE 1200 Twin Barrel Continuous Freezer, Porrelli’s new Bubblegum Swirl and Hazelnut Chocolate flavours will be available in 51 stores in Scotland.

This new deal is the Paisley based ice-cream factory’s first supermarket listing for the flavours, following a recent investment of £35,000 in state-of-the-art technology allowing new innovative flavours to be invented.

The new flavours are available in a 500ml size, retailing at £2.50 a tub and are in addition to the Vanilla and Scottish Tablet dairy ice cream tubs which are already available in Asda stores.

The family-run company have been working with Asda for more than 20 years and previously participated in Asda’s Supplier Development Academy, helping to boost the business from direct delivery to local Asda stores in Glasgow to a national Scottish distribution through depot.

Enzo Durante, managing director at Porrelli said:

We are thrilled to secure our first national supermarket listing for the Bubblegum Swirl and Hazelnut Chocolate flavours.

Over the past few years we’ve seen real innovation of ice cream flavours mimicking confectionary, thanks to a revival of the modern-day ice cream parlour.

Thanks to this consumer demand, we are always developing new flavour combinations and sauces, so it’s good to see this popularity now finding its way into retail pots in the supermarkets.

Regional buying manager at Asda, Heather Turnbull, said:

Porrelli Ice Cream has been available at Asda for 20 years now and has been a huge success in stores across the country, so we know our customers are going to enjoy the two new flavours that have launched.

Over the years we have stocked a number of Porrelli Ice Cream products allowing customers to enjoy luxury ice cream packed full of home-grown Scottish taste, talent upporting local Scottish suppliers is an integral part of what we strive to do at Asda and we’re delighted to continue to support Porrelli Ice Cream range across our stores.

Porrelli has been making ice cream for more than 90 years for the catering and retail industry and stocks more than 100 flavours.

The company is well-known for its unusual flavours including Tablet, Iron Brew, Turkish Delight and Italian Mascarpone & Amarena Cherry.

https://porrelli.com/

Story courtesy of Scottish National

Full range of New ROKK Homogenisers now launched

We are pleased to announce the ROKK Homogeniser range has been fully extended to include the 3, 4, 5 & 6 Series high performance Homogenisers now.

ROKK homogenisers / piston pumps are available with capacities from 250-7500 lt/h as no stage, one stage or double stage depending on application. See the individual specifications below:

ROKK 3 Series with capacities from 250-1000 lt/h
ROKK 4 Series with capacities from 1000-2000 lt/h
ROKK 5 Serieswith capacities from 1000-4000 lt/h
ROKK 6 Series with capacities from 2050-7500 lt/h

See the ROKK website for more details or please get in touch to discuss your specific requirements.

See us at the Ice Cream and Gelato Expo 2019!

See us 12th-14th February at the Yorkshire Event Centre, Harrogate

The Ice Cream and Gelato Expo is a unique expo showcasing a huge assortment of ice cream varieties together with its equipment and supplies. This show provides a unique forum for suppliers, retailers, caterers and manufacturers of ice cream products.

The show aims to encourage and support the production, vending and consumption of premium quality ice creams and other frozen treats. The Ice Cream and Gelato Expo also showcases the various types of machinery and equipment’s utilized by the ice cream industry.

The event enjoys massive popularity among all the sections of the society and within all age groups. The event provides the ideal opportunity to business to build brand images, create and optimize business opportunities and launch new products.

If you’re looking for new products, suppliers, inspiration or a new business venture, don’t miss out on the only dedicated exhibition for the Ice Cream Industry.

To pre-register please click here.

Click here to watch the highlights of the Ice Cream Expo 2017 or click here to watch Steve Christensen: The Ice Cream Bloke’s videos of the first and second day.

Opening Times

Tuesday 12th February
10.00am – 5.00pm (last entry 4.30pm)

Wednesday 13th February
10.00am – 5.00pm (last entry 4.30pm)

Thursday 14th February
10.00am – 3.00pm (last entry 2.30pm)

New ROKK 3 Series Homogeniser

Brand new for 2019, ROKK introduces the 3 Series, a high pressure homogeniser and piston pump with excellent performance and reliability.

With machines from 25 – 25,000 L/H for a superior ice cream mix combined with highly competitive pricing, ROKK offers local service and spare parts support from it’s UK distributers Machinery World.

FEATURES

Designed according to the EU safety rules (CE standards)
Single and two stage options
Engineered, manufactured and tested according to ISO EN 9001 Quality System
Engineered and designed for easy maintenance and clearing (CIP and SIP)
Suitable for abrasive and viscous product
Automatic homogenisation pressure controller with pneumatic adjustment
Stainless steel construction (Frame) and electrical panel board
Less footprint with ergonomic design
Sanitary design analogue diaphragm high pressure gauge
V belts drive train and gearbox speed reduction unit
AC motor drive

Category: Products

The Butter Boom: Why Flavoured Butter Is the Summer Spread Everyone’s Talking About

A $2.5 Billion Opportunity…

Chicken Skin Butter??….

From Separation to Spreadable: We’ve Got You Churned and Ready (lol)…

References:

News

Celebrating 5 years of partnership: Machinery World and Simon Freres deliver cutting-edge butter processing solutions ccross the UK & Ireland

Machinery World are pleased to have been working as the Simon Freres UK & Ireland agents for the last 5 years supplying a full range of cream preparation and butter processing machinery.

News

‘Turning off our blast freezer until summer’: how UK firms are cutting energy costs

News

Discover the magic inside Tetra Pak® Ingredient Dosers

News

Official UK Distributors for Simon Frères Butter Processing Machinery

News

So how did the "99" get its name?

News

Scottish ice cream brand Porrelli scoops fresh Asda listing

News

Full range of New ROKK Homogenisers now launched

News

See us at the Ice Cream and Gelato Expo 2019!

News

New ROKK 3 Series Homogeniser

News

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