The Fairy Tale-Part Three

Fun and Beautiful display at Tony Caputo's Market & Deli, SLC, UT

Butcher's Bunches Handcrafted Preserves is a fun company to own!  I do what I love; play with my food!  I literally get to take produce that has been grown by farmers from one end of this state to the other and make it into fruit spreads and preserves that are just bursting with fresh fruit flavor!  Just as though you had just picked them from the garden!

Kenneth Butcher

I started this company at the words of my friend Mary Ann and because of my commitment to local farmers and gardening.  I also have a young son named Kenneth who should not eat a lot of sugar because of health limitations-Butcher's Bunches is dedicated to him.  My business could not be any closer to my heart, literally.  So when someone threatens it, I have a little bit of a "come-a-part."  It is emotional to me.  Kenneth will be 18 this year, but will always be financially dependent on someone else.  My hope is that Butcher's Bunches will pay for him to have home health care services when I am not alive to do so. 

Unfortunately, that wicked Step-Mother part of the fairy tale is still hovering right over my shoulder.  Day in and Day out, whether or not I know it.  I try to forget her, to ignore her and to stop all communications with her, but she is ever present, like some evil force in a cave that I cannot be rid of.

She has seen Kenneth twice in his 17 plus year existence (after fighting us for custody of our other two children throughout my pregnancy and the birth of Kenneth-no she was not present for that beautiful moment.)

Early this year I received about a dozen emails from my mother that were nasty, mean and threatening.  It was strange as I had not heard from her in years.  I was not kind in return, I will admit. After the sixth or seventh degrading email I told her to stop contacting me or I would contact the police about harassment.  She told me I would be sorry in multiple more emails.  A week or two later I received a an email and a phone call from my distributor stating that he, Whole Foods and Harmon's grocery stores had been contacted by an anonymous "woman" who was telling them that Butcher's Bunches products were not what they represent themselves to be.  In other words they are full of sugar, full of preservatives, made with fruit from outside of Utah, etc.  He did not care and he had taken care of the stores that he controlled, but he wanted me to be aware of what was going on.

Because of the verbage that he quoted to me that was said during the phone calls, the manner they were made, the absolute direct coincidence in timing of the phone calls that happened with my mother's emails to me and the phone calls to him (coupled with her threat) I knew she was up to no good.  I contacted the Logan Police Department.  I started the paperwork for a Harassment Order, and was advised by the Police (who contacted the county attorney) to try to "solicit an admission of guilt" from my mother about calling and emailing my customer's.  That is a straight up crime-slander, defamation, etc.

BUT, she lives in California, and again the expenses and burden of proof are on me.  The State of Utah is NOT behind me, the victim unless I have absolute proof.  So they sent me off to get it.  I was processing my life's work, my life, my son's (and now my precious grandson's) life in my head.  I have been beaten, abused, and slammed by this person all my life.  Am I supposed to just call her and say "Are you calling everyone I sell to and slamming me (yet again)?"   NO WAY!  Anyone that thinks she would actually give me a strait answer, if any answer, I will show you an oceanfront in Nevada.

So, I sent an email posing as a concerned employee from Whole Foods.  I will even post it right here:

Hello Mrs. Kennard,

I am a cheese monger for ********************* in Utah and carry Butcher's Bunches no sugar added preserves in my stores.  Recently our store was contacted by an anonymous person (you) regarding these products and their producer.  Some of the information that we were given concerns us, particularly the information about the ingredients of the product.

Can you please tell me how you know what is in that jam, and if it truly is not a no sugar added product?  Also, why have you waited this long to contact our stores about the products being represented incorrectly?

I apologize for contacting you like this, and this may be a surprise to you, but we take our customer satisfaction very seriously.  We back all of our local producers 100% and we expect them to be up front with us.  All incoming complaints and reports like yours are recorded and the proper follow through is completed.  I hope that you will cooperate and help us complete our investigation.

We need any and all information that you have about the ingredients, recipes, etc., as soon as possible.


I look forward to hearing from you soon and anticipate your cooperation.

(I am omitting the name of the person I used... but I used the FIRST name of someone I thought was a friend and Whole Foods Employee name.)

I will let you guess from the below list what happened next:

a)  Whole Foods threw away all of my jam.

b)  Whole Foods withdrew my product from one store, but allowed others to continue ordering.
c)  Whole Foods tried to find out the origin of the email by contacting me.
d)  Whole Foods has not contacted me at all.

IF you guessed D-You are correct.  (By the way this was ONLY the Rocky Mountain region of Whole Foods, and all the hype was initiated by one buyer in ONE store in that region;  Hindsight is great.)

More to come....
I know that I was not honest with that email, but I was not being malicious.  I also know that I did not violate any criminal code.