Butter girl summer 🧈

Get in loser, we're jumping on the butter bandwagon.

Jun 15, 2025

🧈 Butter girl summer

At first I started spotting a subtle sprinkle of the slippery substance on my feeds, but now those ooey gooey, melty, yellow blocks of butter are 🐝 buzzing 🐝.

Lately, I’ve seen butter themed dinner parties, butter collabs, and even butter influencer trips. (Read more about Kerrygold’s trip from

Rachel Karten

here.)

Why is butter melting our hearts?

It’s more pure, high in protein, and less processed. As the awareness around things like seed oils rise, there’s now a bigger focus on choosing healthy fats vs. processed fats. And it’s impacting sales too:

The U.S. butter industry is booming, “In 2023, each American used an average of 6.5 pounds of butter (!!!), the most since 1965. In 2024, this trend continued, with an 11.2% rise in domestic consumption”, according to the The Bullvine (lol).
Vital Farms sells premium butter and “experienced robust growth in its butter business, with first-quarter net revenue up 41% year over year”, per Yahoo Finance.
Business Insider claims “Dairy is so back: It's now a high-protein, gut-healthy superfood shoppers love.

It makes everything tastier: Well for one, butter is a key ingredient to making anything a million times more delicious. Remember Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat? Samin Nosrat’s cookbook and Netflix show reminded everyone of the importance of the most basic ingredients. She describes fat as “essential for achieving the full spectrum of flavors and textures of good cooking. Simply put, fat carries flavor”.

BUT(ter) outside of the importance of butter in cooking, and especially baking, it reveals more than just our cravings.

Butter is a rich reflection of culture: I chatted with friend of the letter Ghada, brand marketer by day and food designer by night, who shared some awesome insights about why butter is having a moment:

1) “Butter yellow is trending.” Butter yellow, butter nails, butter aesthetic, are all on the rise with Women 18-34. Per Google Trends and Pinterest Trends, people are searching for Butter Yellow 4x more than they were last year! Butter yellow is even Kitchenaid’s 2025 color of the year.

2) “It’s inherently creative: Butter molds of renaissance era statues, brand logos, colored with natural chives. It’s a medium that isn’t just grape towers and only can be that.” It’s an easy sculpting substance to work with, unlike other substances (one time I had a crazy art teach in high school who had us carve sculptures from salt blocks!), and it’s a surprising way to show up on social. I love how Anthro used it above and how others are having fun with it.

lailacooks

A post shared by @lailacooks

3) “It’s gluttonous, and we’re a maximalist era rn.” Pinterest’s 2025 trends highlighted “Mix & Maximalist”, where “More is more” from a home decor standpoint, and the “Rococo Revival”, focused on “all frills, no chill. This year, weddings, parties and aesthetics will draw inspiration from the Rococo era—a Late Baroque period that was both opulent and ultra-feminine. Gen Z and Boomers are driving this trend toward classic corset gowns, luxe accessories and ornate tablescapes.”

4) Baking is booming: Global events marketplace, Eventbrite, reached out to me to collab and shared this awesome data. Baking workshops grew 38% YoY as young people seek tactile alternatives to digital overwhelm. The top cities for baking events were D.C., Boston, and NYC, and the top cities with the most growth for baking events were Miami, FL (+750%), Houston, TX (+207%), and Chicago, IL (+119%). I LOVE BAKING if you haven’t already figured this out so it makes me happy that this is becoming a new fav past time for many. Obviously butter is a key ingredient for baking, and there are so many cool homegrown bakeries that popped up post-covid, that I imagine this will only continue to grow.

5) Perhaps this is an anti-Ozempic, Skinnytok revolt. In the past year especially, it’s become quite apparent what celebs + influencers are using weight loss drugs like Ozempic. Skinny is back on the runway along with the rise of Skinnytok on TikTok. It seems like instead of falling for this trap, there’s a subsection of girlies that are embracing the butter girl way of life.

Butter is a soothing salve for the soul.

I think ultimately when times are stressful, people crave comfort food, to feel full, to eat something rich, because it helps you mentally feel better. Body and mind are so much more interconnected than we often realize (more on that in a future letter!) but it makes sense to me that butter is having a moment. Even when you look at butter, it evokes works like: voluptuous, soothing, plentiful.

Maybe Chicken Soup for the Soul books should come out with a new version: Butter for the Soul lol, and yes, apparently they are still around!

What does this mean for marketers? Butter girl summer is the new brat summer, replacing lime green for butter yellow, but still embracing the countercultural DGAF mindset. This rise reflects a deeper rejection of diet culture and a return to comfort, creativity, and culinary joy. With sales surging, influencer trips churning, and “butter yellow” topping trend charts, butter is becoming both a literal and symbolic balm: anti-Ozempic, pro-plenty, and deeply rooted in how we want to feel - comforted, decadent, and full in every sense.
Here are a few ideas if you want to butter your audience up!
🧈 Have some fun with your social content. Maybe you can use butter as a surprising component. Carve it, melt it, smear it!
〰️ Embrace, celebrate, and flaunt curves for who you feature in your content.
👩🏼‍🍳 Throw a baking event! If your target audience are W18-34, this could be a big hit.

Dinner Party Fodder

Tasty tidbits to talk about at your next dinner party. 😋

🤤 Recipe of the week: Plantain french toast with pineapple compote and coconut whipped cream!!! I make this for Brad every Father’s Day. The recipe came from one of our all-time fav hotels, The Malliouhana in Anguilla. We ate it every day and loved it so much that I emailed the chef for the recipe and they were so kind to share it. Here’s a recipe for the Plantain bread itself (if you can’t find ripe plantains just use bananas!) and then the recipes for making the french toast, the compote, and whipped cream below (just click on the images to expand them):
🚬 Trend of the week: Fridge cigarettes aka a crisp Diet Coke straight from the fridge. Also, real cigarettes are trending too.
Emily Sundberg
originally linked this in Feed Me a few days ago. (Feed Me is an absolute must-read).
🔥 Hot take of the week: Gracie Abrams is a worse influence on your daughters than Sabrina Carpenter. I don’t agree with everything she espouses, but I do think it’s a really worthwhile read. I’d throw Clairo in the same group as Gracie tbh.
🧈 Butter of the week: Ina Garten’s fav butter is Beurre de Baratte.
🎁 Gift of the week: A pad of butter notepad or a butter hat (thanks Maura for the reco!).
🍸 Social idea of the week: A brand should really recreate this for literally any product that they sell. This cracks me up. 🤣
betches
A post shared by @betches
Upcoming Pollinatr topics: Somatics, Virtual fashion, and Fertility. If you want to be interviewed about any of these topics, have insights to share, or have questions you want me to answer, reply directly to my email! I always love hearing from my readers!
If you liked this letter, forward to a friend! Have a fab week everyone. 🐝