Nerdy Nuts: an $800 used grinder, a farmers market booth, and $1.1M of peanut butter in 30 days on TikTok Live
Craig Mount and his wife Erika started with a secondhand peanut butter grinder in their South Dakota garage. Five years later the business did $16 million in a year. Today the main channel is a 9-hour TikTok Live: post a video, go live, sell $40,000 to $50,000.
Overview
Nerdy Nuts calls itself "the Ben and Jerry's of peanut butter": peanut butter mixed with dessert. Caramel, milk chocolate, white chocolate, raspberry, and flavors like Dubai Chocolate Bar. The jars are short with wide mouths, built for eating with a spoon in front of Netflix.
It went from about $50,000 in year one to $16 million in year five. In one recent 30-day stretch it sold more than $1.1 million of peanut butter, mostly on TikTok Live.
The garage
Craig saw a New York company, Peanut Butter & Co., making flavored peanut butter sandwiches and thought: what if you put it in a jar?
A new grinder cost $3,000. He bought a used one on eBay for $800, took it apart, cleaned it, replaced parts and got it running himself. Then it sat in the garage.
The family moved back to South Dakota for their second child. When Erika got pregnant, she turned the grinder into a side hobby. They called the Black Hills Farmers Market and got a booth.
It became the most popular stand at the market. They sold out every week and made about $3,000 on a Saturday.
The $250 call
Craig wanted press. He called a PR consultant who charged $1,000 an hour. "I don't have $1,000, but I have $250. Can I get 15 minutes of your time?" The consultant laughed and said yes.
Those 15 minutes gave the business its identity. The consultant told him: you are not a cute nut butter stand, you are the Ben and Jerry's of peanut butter. "Honestly, dude, I think this is a $20 million company."
He also gave him a stunt to copy from Airbnb, which had once launched themed breakfast cereals for press. Craig made a set of themed flavors timed to the news cycle and pitched the story to 200 news outlets. One national business site ran it.
"I went from making $3,000 on a Saturday to $25,000 in an hour." They put all $25,000 back into the business: a Shopify store with better checkout, a better website, better jars, finished recipes.
TikTok
Craig had worked as a Product Expert at Google, so he knew ads and data. But ad costs climb when the economy is down, and he preferred organic growth.
He studied 217 peanut butter brands with backlink tools (Majestic, Moz, Ahrefs) to see where their sales came from. He even bought their products to track delivery times and estimate how many units they sold. The pattern: lots of traffic from Instagram links. He tried Instagram influencers, but their agents wanted big money.
Erika noticed TikTok was taking off. They sent jars to a few TikTok creators. "We sold $80,000 in two minutes." Sales went from $50,000 a year to $500,000 a week.
That became the playbook for years. Videos hit 5 million to 25 million views. They were one of food reviewer Keith Lee's first brand deals.
When it stopped working, and TikTok Live
Then, with no announcement, influencer videos stopped performing. Everything had to be labeled as paid promotion and reach collapsed. They lost too much money and cut the entire influencer budget, their main channel.
Craig's read: TikTok was sending huge traffic to Shopify stores and decided to keep the sales inside TikTok Shop. So they moved everything there.
The discovery: videos perform better while you are live. So the routine became: post a video, then go live for 9 hours, selling through TikTok Shop. "Right now, you make an interesting video on TikTok, go live for nine hours, and you can make $40,000 to $50,000."
What happens during the live
- The video comes first. They post a new video, then go live. Craig's observation: the video gets pushed harder while the account is live, and the video's viewers land in the live.
- The live runs 9 hours. It is not a sales pitch on repeat. It is a show with a host, built around the products: tasting, new flavors, talking to the people in the chat.
- Everything sells inside TikTok Shop. Viewers buy without leaving the app, which is exactly what TikTok wants, so TikTok keeps sending viewers.
- The result: $40,000 to $50,000 from one long live.
They rebuilt themselves as a show: "Nerdy Nuts TV. Welcome to the SpreadQuarters. I'm Craig, your host." QVC-style selling, every day. Some days TikTok Live outsells the whole Shopify store.
Sunday drops
Every Sunday at 7 pm Eastern they release a new flavor, the way sneaker brands drop shoes. A hit like Dubai Chocolate Bar can sell out in 32 seconds. The private Facebook group has 37,000 members waiting for it.
Drops solve a production problem too: they make fresh product through the week, sell it Sunday to Tuesday, and ship Monday to Wednesday.
The numbers
| Figure | Number |
|---|---|
| Used grinder | $800 on eBay (new: $3,000) |
| Farmers market | About $3,000 a Saturday |
| PR consultant | $250 for 15 minutes |
| First press hit | $25,000 in an hour |
| First TikTok creator push | $80,000 in two minutes |
| After TikTok | $50,000 a year to $500,000 a week |
| Year five revenue | $16 million |
| Following year | $13 million, after a $4 million peanut butter cup machine |
| One recent month | $1.1 million+ in 30 days |
| One 9-hour TikTok Live | $40,000 to $50,000 |
| Facebook group | 37,000 members |
Tools he uses
- Kalodata: TikTok Shop analytics, to see what is selling.
- SparkToro: to find where an audience spends its time.
- Ahrefs: to see who links to a competitor and work out their marketing.
- SPINS: grocery sales data by category and brand, to spot what is rising.
His next bet, from the same data: naturally flavored coffee. He put $100,000 into a new brand, Toasty Coffee Co., because "there's room for a Ben & Jerry's of coffee."
Do what he did: step by step
1. Start at a farmers market.
Do this: a booth costs little and tells you in one Saturday whether strangers buy. Craig sold out every week before he spent anything on marketing.
2. Buy the equipment used.
Do this: eBay and Facebook Marketplace. He paid $800 for a $3,000 machine and fixed it himself.
3. Give your product a one-line identity.
Do this: "the Ben and Jerry's of X." People remember a comparison, and so do reporters.
4. Pitch a stunt, not a product.
Do this: make something timely and funny, and pitch the story to 200 outlets. One yes paid $25,000.
5. Send product to small creators.
Do this: skip the agents. Ship free jars to creators who already post about food, and watch which one moves sales.
6. Go live and stay live.
Do this: post a video, then run a long TikTok Live selling through TikTok Shop. Treat it as a show with a host, not a sales call.
7. Drop on a schedule.
Do this: one new item, same day and time every week. Scarcity gives people a reason to show up, and a private group gives them a place to wait.
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Sources
- Hampton, "He Makes $1M Per Month Selling Peanut Butter on TikTok Live," interview with Craig Mount by Dylan Eastwood (January 16, 2025)
