When you first taste one of Chef Shamy’s gourmet butters (and we did), you’ll immediately be struck by the intensity of their flavor. For those who love food – it’s a bit of bliss.
The folks at Chef Shamy will tell you this comes from their dedication to using only natural ingredients - not preservatives or fillers.
Their commitment to real food, however, comes at a cost: It requires a staggering amount of logistics to ensure quality, safety and consistency. This is why we’re honored they chose Cognito Forms to help wrangle the data that’s propelled them from startup to multinational organization.
Success began around the kitchen table
About a decade ago, David Shamy packaged and sold his first batch of compound butters to help raise funds for his daughter’s drama club. He sold the few leftovers he had to a local grocer. When that grocer came looking for more, he rented a small commercial kitchen and Chef Shamy Gourmet Butter officially entered production.
Today, on the verge of opening their third production facility, the Chef Shamy brand produces:
- Nine flavors of their signature compound butters
- Assorted flavors of real buttercream frosting
- A second line of Fresh Churned butters sold exclusively in grocery store bakeries
To produce such quality products on this scale, the company needs to maintain an almost unimaginable level of organization and recordkeeping.
Creating a big business from small details
“We use Cognito Forms to help automate many of our processes throughout production,” explains David’s brother and company president Kevin Shamy. “In doing so, they help us keep the product flowing and the people happy.”
For example, as plain butter arrives from local dairies, it must be logged into inventory alongside all the other natural ingredients. When those ingredients are combined, that process is again logged. This process repeats throughout the production cycle.
The result is that each individual package of gourmet butter can be traced from anywhere in the world back to each individual ingredient that went into making it.
And that’s just one way they’re using Cognito Forms.
Forms in distribution
“We also use Cognito Forms to interface with everything from our ERP [enterprise resource planning] system to our shipping/receiving logs and general ledger,” elaborates Database Administrator Mark Shamy.
“We have a form that warehouse personnel use as they pick orders,” he adds. “They enter the product, volume and lot. Then using webhooks they check for approved-to-release products.”
These user-friendly interfaces not only make work tasks easier for employees, they streamline development and implementation.
“Using Cognito Forms saves us a lot of development time,” explains Mark. “I try to make our forms do as much of the work as they possibly can before finding ways to make our other systems do it.”
The future
In addition to quadrupling production over the course of this year, the company’s expanding their packaging options to include single-serve sizes. This will make Chef Shamy butters available to guests on cruise ships, airlines, and anywhere else people would enjoy a personal-size pat of gourmet goodness.
“At the end of the day, it comes down to providing healthy, great-tasting food that people enjoy. We want to bring that to as many people as possible,” says David.
If you’re not one of the people who’s tried their butters – we strongly encourage you to give them a taste. (And make a grilled cheese sandwich using the garlic butter. It’s quite possibly the best grilled cheese we’ve ever had.)
Just visit Chef Shamy’s website and find a retailer near you.
Ace E.
Ace is the Marketing Communications Manager for Cognito Forms. When not at the office, you can find him volunteering with the American Advertising Federation (and soon on stage with his band: the Cottontown Soul Society).