West Coast, fresh roast. Taste the coastal freshness, quality and care in every jar of locally-made Island Nut Roastery peanut butter.
Without additives or preservatives, their process is simple: they roast everything in small batches with only the highest-quality ingredients and use the same peanut butter grinder that came with the kitchen. The process isn’t a fancy one, but it happens to work really, really well.
For over 40 years, nuts have been a family tradition for owner Max Young.
In the early 1980s, his father Mark married Connie Pepper, whose family owned Peppers Grocery in Cadboro Bay Village. With interest rates soaring as high as 21%, Mark struggled to make payments on his boat as a commercial fisherman and also wanted to remain ashore to raise a family. So Mark’s new father-in-law, John Pepper, brought him into the grocery business. By 1984, Mark struck out on his own, opening the bulk-foods shop For Good Measure next door to Peppers.
Max took over For Good Measure when his dad retired to run a hobby farm in Cobble Hill, still supplying fresh produce to the store. In 2000, when the family decided the freshness of wholesale nuts wasn’t up to snuff, they started roasting in-house and producing a few nut butters and trail mixes. Today, the tradition continues with an expanded nut roastery and wholesale operation here on the island in Sidney that supplies over 50 stores across BC, including ours.
Young says what distinguishes their products from the competition is freshness.
With the exception of hazelnuts, the uncooked nuts are mostly imported; however, they are not roasted or processed into butters until a store has ordered them, so they are not warehoused for prolonged periods of time.
You’ll find the smooth and crunchy versions of Island Nut Roastery peanut butter in our Breakfast Aisle #8.