A Haven for Butter Lovers Opens in Longmont This Weekend

"I would love to kick the date down the curb a little bit, but we're going to open on Saturday," says Shauna Lee Strecker of Bella la Crema Butter Shoppe & Dairy Market, which will celebrate its grand opening at 931 Main Street in Longmont from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, August 3.

The occasion is bittersweet: Bella la Crema debuted in Lyons, where Strecker lives, in 2018 and had a three-year run as the world's first butter bar before its building was sold (that space is now home to chef Theo Adley's Marigold). In mid-December, she opened Ranch House West, a tavern and community gathering space, in the small town, which is in the area affected by one of the wildfires that sparked in the state this week.

"I have to acknowledge that that's happening. I couldn't even post about the opening, I feel like an asshole — like I should be there doing something. But that's the thing with tragedies: There's nothing I can do," she says. "But this community  — for a community of like 2,300 people, holy shit, I've never seen strength and resilience from a community like there," she adds, mentioning previous fires and floods that have devastated Lyons in recent years.

Strecker's original plan was to reopen Bella la Crema inside Ranch House West. Last holiday season, she tested that idea by doing pop-ups in the space "and I was floored at how much butter I sold," she told Westword in January.
But Strecker quickly realized that the space was "too small to handle the next iteration of Bella la Crema," she says. She had been looking for the perfect space to revive the butter business and was back to square one when a patron at Ranch House West mentioned an available space in Longmont. "I'd been pushing a boulder up a hill for two years, and you just dropped a nugget in my lap!" she recalls thinking. When she went to see it in person, "I walked in and I could see it. ... It's glorious and perfect and lovely."

The space includes a new, 1,000-square-foot production kitchen as well as 500 square feet of retail space. Unlike the original Bella la Crema, this location has no room for on-site dining, but it will offer its butter flights in a packaged version, along with grab-and-go food. The lineup includes items that were popular at the Lyons cafe, such as French baguette pizza, French onion soup and burrata bombs (a cheesy, pot pie-like creation). 
Along with her signature lineup of cultured butters, which include flavors like Monet's Garden (lavender, rose, vanilla and nutmeg), Mayan chocolate and Rosemary's Sage, Bella la Crema offers a carefully curated selection of items such as buttermilk meat soaks, pancake and biscuit kits, ice cream, crackers, bread and charcuterie.

Strecker is also excited to introduce a new line of butter in push-up tubes dubbed Butter Snob. "Like how people bring their own hot sauce to restaurants, now you can take your own butter," Strecker says. Those are expected to roll out in the next month or so.

Now that she has a large space in which to make butter, the ultimate goal is to expand. "The hope is that after this, that production kitchen can supply two to four other butter bars," Strecker concludes.

The more butter, the better!