Justin’s Nut Butter: Justin Gold. He Was Waiting Tables, Then...He Reinvented Peanut Butter.
Justin Gold, founder of Justin's Nut Butter, shares his journey from waiting tables in Boulder, Colorado to building a nationally recognized natural nut butter brand worth $280 million. Starting with a food processor and $35,000 from family, he navigated product development, distribution challenges, and key innovations like the squeeze pack format. The episode covers his company's acquisition by Hormel, his difficult departure, and his recent return to the brand.
Summary
Justin Gold grew up in western Pennsylvania, studied to become a lawyer, but instead moved west — first to Northern California, then to Boulder, Colorado in 2001, where he began waiting tables. A vegetarian with a sweet tooth, he noticed the stark contrast between the vast variety of jams and jellies on store shelves versus the limited options in the nut butter section. This observation, combined with his habit of mixing peanut butter with honey or jelly, sparked a curiosity about why flavored nut butters didn't exist commercially.
Over four to six months, Justin experimented in his apartment with a food processor, testing dozens of formulations of flavored peanut butters and almond butters. He kept detailed journals numbering each jar and recording ingredients and percentages. He discovered early on that water content was the key challenge — ingredients like honey would cause texture degradation over time. He spent nearly a year writing a business plan, using the University of Colorado's library and connecting with local food entrepreneurs, professors, and angel investors for guidance. His first company name was 'Paragon Peanut Butter,' but friends kept calling it Justin's, and the name stuck.
With $35,000 raised from family — including his parents, uncle, sister, and grandmother's inheritance — Justin purchased a refurbished Urschel grinding machine for $3,250 and partnered with a shared commercial kitchen in South Denver, working overnight shifts while still waiting tables and later working at REI. His roommate John Ickebone became his first collaborator. He launched with three products: honey peanut butter, honey almond butter, and cinnamon peanut butter. His first retail customer was Great Harvest Bread in Boulder, followed by local co-ops and specialty stores.
At farmer's markets, Justin learned two critical lessons: he couldn't please everyone so he had to commit to his formulations, and consumers actually wanted a 'classic' unflavored version more than specialty flavors — which became his best seller. He also used palm oil to solve the oil-separation problem that plagued natural nut butters. Selling door-to-door to Whole Foods stores, he personally stocked shelves and ran in-store demos, leveraging relationships and memorizing staff names to build trust store by store. He eventually got into UNFI distribution and expanded to about 25 stores.
The pivotal innovation came around 2006-2007 when, during a mountain bike ride eating an energy gel, Justin wondered why no one made peanut butter in a squeeze pack. He discovered contract manufacturers refused due to nut allergy liability concerns, which he reframed as a competitive advantage — if no one else could make it, he should. He purchased a refurbished single-use squeeze pack machine for $30,000 (funded by his roommate's parents with a $75,000 loan) and co-shared a kitchen facility with Bobo's Oat Bars founder Beryl Stafford.
The squeeze packs initially failed when placed in the energy bar aisle — consumers didn't understand what they were. By moving them next to the jars in the nut butter section, sales took off. Justin discovered the top reason consumers bought squeeze packs wasn't portable protein (his original intent) but as a trial-size vehicle to try almond butter before committing to a full jar — which then drove jar sales as well.
To scale, Justin brought on Lance Gentry, a former Izzy Soda executive, as president. The business landed a major deal with Starbucks for their bistro protein plates, which required upgrading to a fully certified manufacturing facility. Justin's also expanded into natural peanut butter cups, positioning them as the premium, natural food store alternative to Reese's — a move that increased product velocity and brought new customers into the brand.
In 2010-2011, Lance Gentry was diagnosed with brain cancer and passed away within a year, leaving Justin to lead the company alone through a critical growth phase while also becoming a new father. He subsequently raised $47 million from VMG Partners, a San Francisco-based private equity firm with experience scaling natural food brands. Peter Burns, former Celestial Seasonings executive, was brought in as co-CEO to manage investor relations and operations while Justin focused on quality, culture, and marketing.
In 2016, Hormel acquired Justin's for $280 million. Justin stayed with the company for five years but found the brand stagnated under Hormel — not due to ingredient changes, but because it didn't receive the strategic focus it needed within a large corporation prioritizing brands like Spam and Skippy. Justin was eventually let go during COVID, which he described as disorienting but ultimately liberating.
More recently, Forward Consumer Products acquired a 51% controlling stake in Justin's from Hormel and brought Justin back as an owner and board-level founder. The goal is to grow the brand to its full potential — potentially doubling or tripling its size — before finding it a better strategic home. Justin reflects that his success was roughly 50% hard work and 50% luck, crediting the Boulder ecosystem, key mentors like Lance Gentry, the mountain bike ride inspiration, and Reese's having trained consumers on the peanut butter cup format.
About this episode
<p>At 25, Justin Gold was making experimental peanut butter in his home kitchen with a food processor and a stack of recipe journals. His singular obsession: bring new life to a tired lunchtime staple.</p><p>What started as late-night experiments with honey, cinnamon and banana eventually became Justin's — one of the most influential natural food brands of the last two decades.</p><p>At first, Justin got rejected by most grocery stores he approached. He worked overnight in a shared industrial kitchen, hand-filling jars one at a time. He couldn’t get a distributor, so he stocked the shelves at the Boulder Whole Foods himself.</p><p>And when growth stalled… he had an idea during a mountain bike ride that would transform the company: What if peanut butter came in a squeeze pack?</p><p><br /></p><p>In this episode, Justin explains how relentless experimentation and stubbornness helped him build a category-defining brand — and how, with each entrepreneurial milestone, an even more challenging one emerged.</p><p><strong>YOU’LL LEARN:</strong> </p><ul><li>How Justin reverse-engineered flavored peanut butter in his apartment</li><li>How launching in Boulder gave him a big advantage</li><li>How he learned when to listen to feedback, and when to ignore it </li><li>The deal he made with Whole Foods: “I’ll stock the shelves myself.”</li><li>How the squeeze pack transformed the business, and why it almost didn’t work </li><li>The power of naïve persistence in entrepreneurship</li></ul><p><br /></p><p><strong>Timestamps:</strong></p><ul><li>00:09:35 — The obsessive recipe experiments that became Justin’s edge</li><li>00:16:25 — Getting support from Boulder’s startup food community </li><li>00:21:28 — Raising $35,000– and shocking his family: “I wanna make peanut butter!” </li><li>00:42:51 — The farmers market feedback that changed the product line</li><li>00:46:56 — Justin talks his way into the first Whole Foods </li><li>00:51:47 — Justin’s gets into more stores, but sales start to stagnate </li><li>00:53:35 — The mountain bike ride that sparked the squeeze-pack idea </li><li>01:19:43 — The brand gets sold, Justin gets fired…and invited back</li></ul><p><br /></p><p>This episode was produced by J.C. Howard, with music by Ramtin Arablouei.</p><p>Edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Alex Cheng.</p><p><br /></p><p><strong>Follow How I Built This:</strong></p><p>Instagram → <a href="https://www.instagram.com/howibuiltthis/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@howibuiltthis</a></p><p>X → <a href="https://x.com/howibuiltthis" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@HowIBuiltThis</a></p><p>Facebook → <a href="https://www.facebook.com/howibuiltthis" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">How I Built This</a></p><p><strong>Follow Guy Raz:</strong></p><p>Instagram → <a href="https://www.instagram.com/guy.raz/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@guy.raz</a></p><p>Youtube →<a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNSfrxNEmCruNtjIzxCBHjg" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> guy_raz</a></p><p><br /></p><p>X → <a href="https://x.com/guyraz" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@guyraz</a></p><p>Substack →<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/guyraz.substack.com__;!!Iwwt!RZoD751oWzUzoqqdJiqaoL6HdJfRHDUO1TKvYJ424d3Udn7-Pw9Nj6nEsauh9zcgEvLjUEc$" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><a href="http://guyraz.substack.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">guyraz.substack.com</a></p><p>Website →<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/guyraz.substack.com__;!!Iwwt!RZoD751oWzUzoqqdJiqaoL6HdJfRHDUO1TKvYJ424d3Udn7-Pw9Nj6nEsauh9zcgEvLjUEc$" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><a href="http://guyraz.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">guyraz.com</a></p><p>See Privacy Policy at <a href="https://art19.com/privacy" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://art19.com/privacy</a> and California Privacy Notice at <a href="https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info</a>.</p>
Key Insights
- Justin Gold noticed that the jams and jellies section in grocery stores was three times the size of the nut butter section, and interpreted this disparity as an untapped opportunity for flavor innovation in nut butters.
- Gold discovered through kitchen experimentation that water activity was the core technical barrier to flavored nut butters — ingredients like liquid honey caused texture degradation within days, requiring him to find low-moisture alternatives.
- Gold's original branded name 'Paragon Peanut Butter' was abandoned not by design but because friends couldn't remember it and kept calling it 'Justin's,' demonstrating that brand names are sometimes decided by consumers rather than founders.
- Gold learned at farmer's markets that his plain 'classic' peanut butter became his best seller despite his belief that flavored varieties were the key differentiator — consumers wanted something reliable for daily use, not a special-occasion product.
- When contract manufacturers refused to make nut butter squeeze packs due to allergy liability concerns, Gold reframed the rejection as a competitive moat — if no one else could produce it, he would be the sole maker.
- The squeeze pack's placement in the store proved more important than the product itself — moving it from the energy bar aisle to next to the nut butter jars transformed sales, revealing that consumer confusion about a novel format can be resolved through contextual shelf placement.
- Gold found that the number one reason consumers bought his squeeze packs was as a low-risk trial vehicle to try almond butter before purchasing a full jar, rather than for portable protein as he had originally intended.
- Gold argues that his success in retail was substantially driven by keeping a detailed notebook of store staff names, descriptions, and personal details — calling employees by name on return visits created goodwill that translated into shelf placement and support.
- Gold credits Lance Gentry's arrival as transformational not just operationally but psychologically — having a more experienced partner removed the isolation of solo entrepreneurship and allowed Gold to focus on areas where he added most value.
- Gold argues that Justin's stagnated under Hormel not because the brand was damaged, but because it was too small to demand attention inside a multi-billion-dollar portfolio where larger brands like Spam and Skippy paid the bills.
- Gold reflects that his success was roughly 50% hard work and 50% circumstantial luck — specifically citing being in Boulder's natural food ecosystem, Lance Gentry finding him at the right moment, and Reese's having pre-educated consumers on the peanut butter cup format.
- Gold argues that the ideal acquisition outcome — getting acquired before the brand collapses — is preferable to the more romanticized founder buyback story, where a brand is often too damaged by the time a founder can repurchase it at a discount.
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Transcript
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