It’s All About the ‘PB’: Passion + Business
By Becca Broaddus
Allie Buckmaster loves peanut butter. The junior Baylor Business Fellow loves it so much that she started a peanut butter business.
“I really do love peanut butter,” she laughed. “I would eat it every meal if I could. It’s such a versatile food product!”
The company began as an idea at an entrepreneurship summer camp for high school students. At the camp, the summer between her junior and senior year, her team proposed a gourmet peanut butter and jelly food truck called PB Palooza. The weeklong project wasn’t the end of the concept.
When she picked the topic of her required senior project the following year, Buckmaster revisited the PB Palooza idea. Instead of a food truck, she adapted the idea into a fully-fledged business—making and distributing homemade peanut butter.
“I’m so glad I went to that camp,” Buckmaster said. “It opened the door to so many opportunities and helped me explore entrepreneurship. My real passions lie in business and serving people.”
She earned an A on the project, graduated and brought the creamy goodness to Baylor. She has built a network of dedicated customers in Waco, consisting of friends, sorority sisters, faculty members and local business owners she met at a Baylor student-run business showcase.
PB Palooza isn’t her focus now, though. Last spring semester, she stepped away from it while she studied abroad in France, and she’s not sure what is next for her. With a marketing internship at Austin, Texas-based startup Curb, Inc., and a human resources internship at Lockheed Martin on her résumé, Buckmaster isn’t ready to commit to peanut butter just yet. (As a career, at least. She isn’t getting rid of peanut butter in her diet anytime soon.)
She is dedicated to a well-rounded business education now. Buckmaster has three major areas of study (Marketing, Entrepreneurship and Human Resources Management), and she decided to add a French minor after studying abroad.
“I’m not quitting PB Palooza,” she reiterated. “I’m keeping my options open. I’m open to seeing where life takes me. If I were to start another business, it’s because I have a passion, or I want to change something. It’s not just to be an entrepreneur. It has to be something I love. I have to be all in and believe it’s helping and serving people.”
Between studying abroad in France and her business, she has grown personally and professionally at Baylor.
“I have 100 percent confidence in myself now, and I’ve gained independence,” Buckmaster said. “I always underestimated myself. PB Palooza taught me that I could do anything I set out to do. If I’m all in, and I’m passionate, I can’t fail. Even if I don’t sell any jars of peanut butter, that’s not failing.”
She is intent to change the world—with or without peanut butter.
Baylor Business Review, Fall 2017