Who? We’re the owners of Hippie Butter Hemp Seed Foods, Brad Ervin, CHO – Chief Hemp Officer (former chef and 25-year rock ‘n’ roll sound engineer), and Melete Finch (Mellow Mel), CHC – Chief Hippie Chick.
Hippie Butter, a premier online specialty grocer, sells legal, natural, gourmet hemp seed food and skin care products through its website, www.hippiebutter.com. Our interactive website and social media feature a wide variety of “superfood” hemp seed products and supply full-time customer service. Hippie Butter’s website also showcases educational, historical, and nutritional information about hemp seeds, as well as easy, step-by-step cooking videos, demonstrating methods to incorporate the healthy, nutty goodness of hemp seeds into your favorite family recipes. Our hemp seed products are good for people, good for the economy and good for the planet.
What is your Personal philosophy/credo, vision, mission for this precious life? We are fortunate to know entrepreneur, author, and thought leader, Jeff Hutner, as our adviser, mentor and guide, (http://newparadigmdigest.com). Hippie Butter embraces Jeff’s” Evolutionary Business” philosophy, which he so eloquently defines as “the new socially responsible business…. in the process of re-examining basic assumptions about mission, vision and values and distributing ethical, moral and spiritual dimensions throughout the business culture to support this new way of being and operating. It is the reintegration of spirit and matter, of business and compassion, of head and heart, of conscious management and the feminine archetype in business and of a sense of love and play along with the mandate of making a profit so that these activities can thrive.” –Jeff Hutner, The Birth of Evolutionary Business. We couldn’t have said it better ourselves!
Summarize how people feel while they are around you, or with you?
Happy. We do think of ourselves as the Happy Hippies of Hippie Butter and our logo IS a smiling Hemp Seed. We love what we do, we love connecting with our friends and customers through social media, events and festivals. We hope that our commitment to happy people, hempy foods and happiness comes through in our social interactions and hemp seed products.
Our mission is to purchase, promote and deliver a growing line of delicious, nutritious, organic gourmet hemp seed food and skin care products for people who live a natural lifestyle, love healthy foods and work to leave a healthy planet for future generations. With vision, vitality and mission, Hippie Butter is a driver for healthy people and a healthy planet!
Day in a life of you?
We’re Hippie-Buttering practically 24/7 around here. Early mornings start with a pot of hemp seed coffee as we yawn, stretch, feed the chickens, donkeys, dogs, cats, fish and tackle overnight emails. We drink hemp seed protein powder smoothies while we connect with more than 200,000 folks through social media – Face Book, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn. Then it’s on to writing personal notes to each customer, filling orders and updating inventory. We take time for lunch and meditation. The rest of the day, evening and late night is spent working on our website, writing blogs, answering phone calls, taking orders, creating content and advertising graphics with lots of breaks for walking and playing with our dogs on our 5 acres of bucolic pasture land. No wonder we’re so happy! Oh, yeah, I forgot to add that we do it all without having to wear a business suit, tie or pantyhose. (My wife, Melete, added the pantyhose part).Um, now it sounds like we don’t wear clothes. I meant to say that we get to dress comfortably as we go about work, which adds to our hempy happiness factor.
Who are you talking to, or the audience you wish to influence? The United States population eats far too many processed junk foods and pre-made dinners. As a result, obesity rates are soaring with more than two-thirds of U.S. adults overweight or obese (Ogden et al., 2014). We know this, but we are slow to change as a society. With the introduction of fast foods, the United States has become a nation of unhealthy, overweight, uninspired eaters. It has only gotten worse. There are over 250 million men, women and children in America, half of whom are too stressed and busy to create easy, healthy foods for their families.
Hippie Butter customers are 60% women and 40% men between the ages of 25 and 55, are active health-and-environmentally-conscious “soccer moms and dads” with busy schedules. We offer excellent, healthy choices of hemp seed food products that are a good source of easily digestible protein, Omega-6 and Omega-3 essential fatty acids, vitamins and minerals. Perfect as a dairy and nut alternative, Hippie Butter’s products are all-natural, vegan-friendly and Kosher, allergen-free, THC-free, gluten-free, dairy-free, trypsin-inhibitor-free and herbicide/pesticide-free. Our staff is experienced in helping “beginning” hemp seed food consumers easily select and incorporate nutty, delicious hemp seed products into their daily meals.
Hippie Butter Does Hemp Better
- Helps repair the health problems processed foods create.
- Our very approachable, helpful, well-informed staff provides top customer support.
- Our competitors are large, impersonal corporations or uninformed small businesses that place dollars ahead of people and the planet.
Hippie Butter started when I gave out Toasted Hemp Seeds to my friends and family for their enjoyment. Then we started our online e-commerce website, www.hippiebutter.com. We’ve expanded and now you can find our hemp seed products in small grocery stores, co-ops and through international distributors, Lucky Vitamin and iHerb. We want everyone to have access to what we believe is the miracle plant, “The Tree of Life” – superfood hemp seeds! Opportunities to incorporate delicious, healthy hemp seeds into your diet should be easily accessible for everyone.
Our “Johnny Hempseed” dream is for anyone to be able to purchase body-mind-soul-healing hemp seeds at every convenience store, corner market, grocery store and pharmacy. You don’t have to be a food snob to reap the incredible benefits of hemp seeds.
Social Activism?
We are hemp activists, volunteers and proud members of the HIA (Hemp Industries of America). We’re thrilled to be supporters of http://www.donorschoose.org
This incredible online charity makes it easy for anyone to help classrooms in need. Each month, we select one of our customers to be the winner of a Hippie-Butter-funded donation card. Public school teachers post classroom project requests on the the charity’s site that range from pencils for poetry to microscopes for mitochondria. The winner of our donorschoose.org donation card gets to choose and donate to the classroom project that interests them most.
Books that inspire you?
The Emperor Wears No Clothes, by Jack Herer. This book was life-changing – it taught me the truth about the Cannabis sativa L plant and pointed me in the hemp direction.
Things a Little Bird Told Me: Confessions of the Creative Mind, by Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter. This small book gave me the confidence to keep moving forward as a start-up hemp entrepreneur.
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Our daily mantra is? “Make it a Hippie Day!”
Why Hemp? Your motivation to be involved?
I’m Brad Ervin, former chef, 25-year rock ‘n’ roll sound engineer and now the CHO (Chief Hemp Officer) of Hippie Butter Hemp Seed Food Products. As I toured the world with artists such as George Strait, Bette Midler, Paul McCartney, and many others, I discovered the “superfood,” hemp seeds. During a tour in Canada, I became sick and exhausted from too many long hours and too much bad food that is so common in the entertainment industry. I stopped for a snack at a convenience store that happened to carry hemp seeds. When I tried some, I fell in love with the nutty, crunchy taste, and started eating a handful a day. It wasn’t long before I was feeling more energized, less stressed, and had a heightened sense of well-being. Since hemp seeds were too good to keep to myself, I took some home to share with my wife, who is a thyroid patient. She also found that hemp seeds made her feel better, by increasing her energy and sense of well-being! She passed them along to her friends and before we knew it, people were clamoring for my hemp seeds–I couldn’t keep up with the demand! When I started buying hemp seeds by the case, the problem I ran into was finding a U.S. company that carried hemp seeds. Finding quality hemp seeds was next to impossible. I thought to myself, “There should be a company that makes a wide variety of high-quality hemp seed products in America!” That was my “lightbulb” moment three years ago. That’s when Hippie Butter was born and www.hippiebutter.com was launched
Your ONE MESSAGE to the world about Hemp, save our Planet, Farmers support, Hemp activism or otherwise pertaining to your message to the world?
Hemp for the body, mind, and soul!
https://www.facebook.com/hippiebutterhempseeds
twitter.com/hippiebutter
pinterest.com/hippiebutter
google.com/+hippiebutter
instagram.com/hippiebutter
Thank You Hemp Out for being a big mover in a new industry and thank you for calling us Hemprenuers we appreciate all your hard work.