Enfys and Alaia Hewitt are the creators of Raglan’s very first peanut butter enterprise successfully launched at May’s Raglan Creative Market.
The girls – Enfys, 10 and Alaia, 8 – are nuts about their product and say the best part of the business is sharing their PB23 journey with local peanut butter lovers.
“I like selling at the market and speaking about what we make to people,” Alaia says.
With their dad Mett Hewitt mentoring them, the girls are about to sell their second batch of smooth and crunchy peanut butter at this Sunday’s Creative Market at the Raglan Old School Arts Centre.
“I’ve always wanted the girls to have a little business. Something they could use to fund their uni studies,” Matt says.
The peanut butter journey hasn’t always been smooth and some jobs were very labour intensive.
Initially the sisters had been doing the shake and bang method to remove air pockets from the jars in order to fill them to capacity, which was taking two minutes per jar.
Matt enlisted a technically-savvy friend and some number eight wire mentality to design an agitator to help the peanut butter settle in the jar. The pair adapted an orbital sander which reduced the time it took to seven seconds.
Both girls say the agitator is one of the jobs they love the most in the whole peanut butter process.
Matt has helped the girls in the various ventures they have undertaken and with every little setback they have not lost their desire to run their own business.
“They’ve tried woodworking, making bangles and other things but as soon as we have to make a large quantity the quality wasn’t so good,” Matt says.
With the PB23 peanut butter the sisters can guarantee they use nothing but 100 percent peanuts and the quality is the same in every jar.
The girls are big fans of using their peanut butter in cooking and have created fudge, cookies, dog treats and bird feeders with PB23.
Check them out at the Raglan Creative Market this Sunday, June 9 from 10am-2pm and get some peanut butter tips from the experts.
Janine Jackson
