JAMA MATTHEWS ALWAYS loved cooking. But even more than that, she wanted to build a brand. At 31, the mother of a 3-year-old is channeling that ambition into Butter Boy Pretzels, a homegrown business with bigger aspirations. “I want to build something lasting,” she explains.
Her twisty path to pretzel-making began with an early college degree and several odd desk jobs. She taught herself design, web basics, and food photography, skills she applied to her first food venture making dairy-free yeast doughnuts. Her sweets had an inclusive appeal—a rare bakery treat for anyone eschewing butter and milk—but her home-based concept failed to grow. And then it screeched to a halt when Matthews was diagnosed with mast cell activation syndrome, a rare disorder limiting her diet. Today, she only eats chicken, sweet potatoes, and frozen blueberries for every meal, meaning she can’t eat her own creations. “As long as I don’t consume the ingredients, I’m stable enough to work around them,” she says.
Instead of keeping her out of the cooking game forever, the diagnosis fueled her drive—creativity making up for what she didn’t have in resources. Thus, she retooled her dough recipe into pretzels with homemade coatings and dips, from cinnamon sugar, to royal icing, to vegan chili butter. In March 2025, she launched Butter Boy Pretzels, an online shop with local pickup that has gained a loyal fan base.
Matthews is determined to make Butter Boy more than just a home bakery. “I’m working really hard to make this a real brand,” she says. It’s a legacy, built from flour, perseverance, and vision that she hopes her son can one day inherit.
