Pic's chief executive Aimee McCammon says the company plans to keep production at home and support NZ businesses to thrive.
Bruce “Pic” Picot started Pic’s Peanut Butter out of his garage in 2007 after noticing a gap in the market for a healthy, Aotearoa-made alternative to the beloved spread.
After over 15 years in business, chief executive Aimee McCammon says the company plans to continue the family’s legacy, support other small businesses and keep production at home to sustain the thriving business.
Tell me about Pic’s Peanut Butter?
Pic is my stepfather. I’ve just taken over as CEO.
The company started in Pic’s garage in 2007 because what he was finding was that all the peanut butter companies were putting sugar, emulsifier and nasty stuff into the peanut butter.
My mum and my aunt used to make peanut butter at home, so he started making it himself and selling it at the markets in Nelson.
Sixteen years later, we are New Zealand’s number one-selling peanut butter.
What do you think has gotten Pic’s to the number one spot?
We use beautiful high-oleic nuts, which are full of healthy, monounsaturated fats like in olive oil or avocados. They’re high in fibre and in protein. We mostly get our nuts out of Australia and Brazil.
So you start with a great quality nut and then we fresh roast every day at our factory and then just mush it up with a tiny little bit of salt and pop it in the jar. It’s always super fresh, best quality, best taste.
Where is Pic’s based?
We’re based in Nelson. You can do factory tours and we have a cafe. We love it when people come down. It’s one of the leading tourist attractions down there now.
We are right on the bike path and they do this really cool carbon zero tourist trail in Nelson now.
What are your best sellers?
Crunchy, salted peanut butter is the number one-selling peanut butter.
Our latest product is called Smunchy and it’s a mix of smooth and crunchy and people are very excited. They’re saying it’s healing their family rifts of who likes crunchy and who likes smooth.
What’s the biggest challenge you guys have got at the moment?
Keeping up with the demand actually, because we outsell the nearest competitor in New Zealand by two to one.
We can’t get all of our nuts out of Australia anymore. We are getting nuts out of Australia and Brazil, but the worldwide peanut crop is actually down, so it’s quite hard to get nuts.
We’ve got such high demand in New Zealand, Australia and China that we’re just trying to keep up with the demand, which is great news.
How long have you been selling Pic’s Peanut Butter in China?
About six years.
Smooth Unsalted is a very popular product in China. A lot of mums give it to their babies. Our small jars of smooth unsalted do really well in China.
How much have your production costs gone up?
The shipping costs were really high during Covid. We are just starting to see a little adjustment down on shipping now.
But it is quite unreliable shipping, so that’s definitely a challenge.
We’ve never put our prices up ever since we’ve been in the supermarket, so we’ve definitely got a little bit of reduced margin.
But times are really tough for Kiwis and we’re a family favourite so we want to just try and keep our pricing down as long as possible.
What was your experience like being at the Food Show?
People are very excited about Smunchy because we make great classic peanut butter. People are always excited at a Food Show to see something new.
They’re loving our big mix, which is our smooth peanut butter with all the delicious seeds in it.
What is it like being an Aotearoa-based business at the moment?
It’s a really interesting time to be in business as the world is grappling with massive challenges, particularly climate challenges and how wealth is spread around the world.
I think we used to look to governments to solve those problems but now businesses have an increased role in trying to solve some of these challenges of the world. And we are thinking really hard about things like that as well as making great peanut butter.
What do you want to achieve through the business in the next few years?
Really just establishing ourselves as an intergenerational family company which is a big deal - keeping great companies in New Zealand.
We really look at the Whittaker family, who are a fourth or fifth-generation New Zealand business, and we think that’s a really great model.
It’s about keeping profits and jobs and opportunities in New Zealand, especially for the regions like Nelson. It’s a great place to live in and a really lovely place to do business.
Do you have any advice for anyone who wants to open their own business?
Give us a call. We are always happy to give a bit of advice.
Just go for it. Have great ideas and be enthusiastic - enthusiasm and excitement for what you’re doing is everything.
