New Plant-Based ‘Butter’ Spread, Faba Butter, Debuting at Fancy Food Show

Faba Butter, a new plant-based ‘butter’ is debuting at the Winter Fancy Food Show later this month in New York.  The brainchild of Brooklyn-based vegans Andrew McClure and Aidan Altman, Faba Butter mimics the taste and texture of its animal-derived counterpart and is made with a blend of coconut oil, water, and “aquafaba”, the brine from a can of chickpeas that they source from hummus producers.  Faba Butter is the second commercial product that utilizes aquafaba, the first being Sir Kensington’s vegan mayonnaise Fabanaise that launched in 2016. 
   
There a sizeable market opportunity for plant-based buttery spreads though brands such as Country Crock, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, Earth Balance, Smart Balance, and Melt Organics have already been in the market.  Faba Butter has a cleaner label and more appealing brand proposition than some of the big names in the butter alternative category, which have lost traction with Millennials and Gen Z shoppers, claimed Altman.  Aquafaba butter is essentially saturated fat from coconut, palm, avocado, etc. though Faba Butter uses coconut oil, but no palm oil, with a dash of unsaturated oil to soften its consistency and make it spreadable and an emulsifier aquafaba to stabilize the emulsion.