Why New Englanders are nuts for Teddie peanut butter

The smells outside a decades-old New England factory rarely make anyone happy.

But a block from an unassuming brick building in Everett, beneath a vintage sign featuring a cheerful teddy bear, you can pick up the scent of roasting peanuts. It's an aroma that evokes not only something tasty, but perhaps also a surge of regional pride.

It’s the home of Teddie, the top-selling natural peanut butter in the Northeast. Owned by the same family for nearly a century, the business has garnered an almost cult-like following. And it isn’t hard to get locals to opine about it.

Down aisle 8 at the Market Basket in Somerville, city resident Naomi Bilmes, 33, pushes a cart with her toddler son, Z'ev, seated inside. Bilmes said her family loves the "nutty" and "creamy" flavors of Teddie's unsalted version.

"It's an affordable peanut butter brand, and it comes in different varieties that we like," she said. "... It's hard to find peanut butter that's unsalted and unsweetened. And we just like the natural unsalted kind."

Minutes later, Seth Hurwitz, 33, also of Somerville, examines the shelves to buy Teddie, a pantry staple in his household. As someone born "anosmic," Hurwitz said he cannot smell the peanuts, but nonetheless feels the textures of Teddie are a cut above other brands like Jif.

"I grew up in the Midwest, and I didn't know anything about Teddie peanut butter until I lived out here," he said, "and ever since getting it for the first time, [I] literally haven't bought a different peanut butter since."

He said he enjoys the smooth stuff almost daily on either "good old-fashioned" peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or straight out of the jar with a knife and some banana.

Shopper Cara Giaimo, 34, credits her wife, Lilia Kilburn, 33, with introducing her to Teddie.

"Really? I thought that all Massachusetts people are just born eating Teddie. I've been eating it since I was a kid," said Kilburn, a Somerville native.

Teddie peanut butter topped this week's grocery list, and while adding a few jars to their cart, Giaimo said their grocery run was moving along smoothly: "Sometimes when I come here, the super chunky salted is actually sold out, and I have to come back a different day."

Kilburn added that though she's been enjoying Teddie her whole life, she didn't realize the factory operated mere miles away until last fall when was on her way an appointment and noticed a "nutty smell in the air."

Since opening its facility in Everett, Teddie has morphed into a major employer in the blue-collar city just north of Boston.

“This is our home. This is where we're going to stay,” said former CEO Mark Hintlian. His grandfather founded the company in Boston in 1925, and Teddie moved to its current location in 1960.

Among other efforts aligned with the company’s mission to “give back” to Everett and surrounding communities, Teddie donates to food banks, and supports and hires people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

But, as the Market Basket shoppers illustrated, company leaders say the detail that keeps customers coming back for more is the taste.

“Once people try Teddie natural, that's it,” added Hintlian, who's now a consultant for Teddie.

Teddie didn’t start out making peanut butter. When the company launched, it sold candy and nuts. Peanut butter, however, was a low-cost nutritious protein, which met a crucial need during the Great Depression. So, as of the 1930s, peanut butter became central to the Teddie business. Decades later, when the COVID pandemic wreaked havoc, Teddie focused again on serving the public at a challenging time.

“There was the COVID demand surge and the shelves were empty, and we stepped up as a company,” Mark Hintlian said. “We kept the lines running day and night.”

Inside the factory, a vast and noisy expanse, is filled with shining metal equipment, utility vehicles, glass jars and hair-netted workers as far as the eye could see. There's also more peanuts than most people have ever seen assembled in one room.

The shelled nuts arrive in Everett by gigantic bagfuls. Each "super-sack" weighs 2,200 pounds, with two or three trucks delivering 20 or so bags every day.

"On an annual basis," Teddie CEO Jamie Hintlian said, "that's tens of millions of pounds of peanuts."

Once unloaded in Everett, the peanuts embark on their production journey. Highlights along the way include the hopper, the roaster and an expedition on a contraption that is, in Jamie Hintlan’s words, “like a little peanut trolley.”

Eventually, the peanuts reach the finish line of their travels: the grinder. The ground peanuts get mixed with a little bit of salt, and then the transformation is complete. Processing about 90 pounds a minute, the machinery squirts fresh Teddie peanut butter into jar after jar after jar.

How many peanuts fill a 16-ounce glass jar of peanut butter? Exactly 541. What happens to the discarded peanut skins? They’re vacuumed up, put in burlap sacks, and about once a month sent to a farmer in Central Massachusetts who feeds them to his pigs.

Jamie Hintlian said the general flow of the factory hasn’t changed much over the decades, but the company has modernized some equipment in the name of efficiency and safety.

“For example," he said, "this machine right here, this case packer? We replaced it earlier this year. If you saw what was there before, it would make your grandmother's Singer sewing machine look like high tech.”

Not far from the factory floor sat a small, quiet room that's a key cog in the peanut butter wheel: The lab. It's the headquarters of quality control and the domain of Teddie's technical director, Carolyn Bristor Hintlian — Jamie Hintlian’s wife.

“It was very cool to marry into Teddie peanut butter,” she said. “And we have a few kids who are pretty much built out of peanut butter.”

Her team spends the workday observing, measuring and noshing on peanut butter — all in the name of science and customer satisfaction.

“Our job is to make sure everything is made right,” she said.

The technicians test for color, texture, amount of salt and the chunkiness of the chunk.

“We use all American peanuts in our natural peanut butter,” she said. “That's a big part of what makes it what it is. And I'd say the people who make it, make it what it is.”

The makers and — in the opinion of Market Basket shopper Cara Giaimo — the mascot, make Teddie what it is.

Tapping on a jar label, Giaimo said, "I think another good thing about Teddie is the bear. He's just so inviting.

"You look at him and you trust him, and you know he's gonna give you something good."

With additional reporting from WBUR's Amy Sokolow and Meghan Kelly