January 2025 Amber Grant Awarded to Courtney Ray’s Peanut Brittle

We’re excited to announce the January $10,000 Amber Amber Grant recipient. Congratulations to Courtney Ray Goodson, owner of Courtney Ray’s Peanut Brittle.

Recently, WomensNet Advisory Board member Marcia Layton Turner sat down with Courtney for an exclusive interview. You can listen to their conversation and view the transcript below.

Video Transcript

Marcia: We are speaking today with our January Amber Grant winner Courtney Ray Goodson of Courtney Ray’s Peanut Brittle. I’m Marcia Layton Turner and I’m a WomensNet Advisory Board member who has the pleasure of speaking with our impressive winners. Courtney, why don’t you tell everybody about your business and where the idea originated?

Courtney: Sure. I’m Courtney Ray of Courtney Ray’s Peanut Brittle, based here in Austin, Texas. I offer a line of gluten-free brittle with vegan and dairy-free options. And I would say, very high level, it was a very sweet story of how we got started that was focused on women’s empowerment. 

It started with a sweet friendship with my great-uncle Ray, who had a 35-year-old peanut brittle recipe. After college, I left to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer in the South Pacific Islands, predominantly working and volunteering with Hindu women. And my great-uncle Ray would send me brittle to my village, and they all loved it. And I realized it was kind of a way of creating community and creating closeness and bringing in a lot of laughs.

There is a woman there named Roshni, who I just felt very compelled to help. We did a lot of business advising together. And the whole time, we were talking about what she would do if she got a little money to start her own business. So after my service was complete and I returned to the U.S., I did a crowdfunding campaign called “The Power of Uncle Ray’s Peanut Brittle” to raise money for her. And if you donated [to help] her to start her own company, I would make you my Uncle Ray’s brittle.

That’s the long story medium. In short, it changed her life. 

She now owns a piece of property, bought a car recently. Her son’s in pharmacy school to help people too. And it ended up changing my own life. I started my own peanut brittle company from that. So, peanut brittle changes lives. That’s the story.

Marcia: And makes me hungry. Had people in the village had peanut brittle?

Courtney: No. It was, in the South Pacific, more of a tropical climate. I don’t know that they even grow peanuts there. And so it was very much a fun, really crunchy, sweet treat that was new for them.

Marcia: As you started and have been growing your business, have there been any resources that you have found in to be super helpful?

Courtney: Yeah, a couple of things. So, when I read Good Food, Great Business as I was getting started, I think that was one that anybody in CPG, consumer packaged goods, [would have read]. It painted a clear picture of what my paths could look like based on how I structured my company. 

Then secondly, I did sync up with a local Small Business Development Center (SBDC). It’s a free resource for no-cost business advising, and I loved my mentor. She was amazing, and she had a lot of experience working with food. She was great.

Marcia: How about marketing. What has worked well for you in terms of marketing tactics?

Courtney: Really, it’s your community. And I have taken an approach of trying to be really scrappy; I’m a fan of bartering. 

For marketing, to date, I’ve been featured multiple times nationwide on camera and in magazines. And I think I’ve only paid $20 on a Facebook ad one time. You never know who’s in your community, who knows what.

And for bartering, I had some product that… right after the holidays. I was sitting on a little bit more inventory than I would have liked to just because it can happen. So, a local Austin women’s magazine reached out, and they had an event coming up. And I bartered with… I gave them product and then they featured me in print in their magazine later in the year in the holiday gift section. I went, wow, this is a win-win. You can do good with what you’ve got. That’s kind of a little mission of our company.

And with marketing, you know, I remember I was doing a demo at a Central Market, and it happened to be a day when nobody was in the grocery store. It was so quiet. And I was like, “Oh, my God, what am I doing with my life?” I think I’d just been silently crying to myself, you know, in the grocery store near the refrigerator section. But just this nice, older gentleman walked up, and we got to talking. And I was asking him questions, and sure enough, his daughter was a producer on the Hallmark Channel on their Home & Family TV show. That’s what allowed me to get connected with her, and then I was then featured on their show for World Peanut Brittle Day. So, you just never know who’s around you and who you can connect with. You can be crying the moment before something really great happens.

Marcia: So, how can we in the WomensNet community show support? What can we do to help your business grow?

Courtney: Yeah, I’d love a follow on Instagram and social media. We’re @thebrittlebabe. My mom came up with that. It’s funny.

And voting for us on the year-end grant. We’ve got some fun, I would say, demos that we’re hoping to accomplish that are more like activations and experiences of the grocery stores. So, we’d be excited to do them.

Marcia: Terrific. Thank you so much for sharing your story and advice for other women business owners. Congratulations, again.