LONGMONT, Colo. — It's the season for butter, so why not embrace it? At what may be the world's first butter bar, you certainly can.
"Everything's better with butter!" said Shauna Lee Strecker, the owner of Bell La Crema.
Located on Main Street in downtown Longmont, Bell La Crema is a specialty butter bar that stands out from the crowd.
Here, guests enjoy small-batch, handcrafted butters in a variety of unique flavors.
"My mission is to make butter beautiful again," she said.
Before Strecker opened for the day, we sat down with coffee—whipped with pumpkin-spice butter and a splash of her own cream—flavored with allspice, cinnamon, maple syrup, and vanilla—to discuss her motivation for opening a butter bar.
She noted that while some of us have been conditioned to think butter is bad, she feels it has contributed to her healing.
"Our brains are packed in fat. We need good fats, but not too much. The reason we culture our butter is to get it as close to raw and natural as possible," she explained.
To achieve this, the butter bar churns butter from cream sourced from small, grass-fed cows and cultures it by reintroducing good bacteria removed during pasteurization.
Another aspect she loves about her butter is its ability to carry spices, which opens up creative flavor possibilities.
What's extraordinary, Strecker said, is that customers who come in for a taste often find themselves moved by the experience.
"People cry, they dance, the butter flavors trigger memories for them all the time," she said.
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