Get To Know Our ​​Communication Majors: Emmy Keogh (C’26)

Whenever the question of post-graduation plans came up, Communication major Emmy Keogh (C’26) and her mom had a running joke: if nothing else pans out, she could always go home and open a butter shop in her hometown of Charleston, South Carolina.

“Charleston is full of cute artisanal storefronts: there's a honey shop and a creperie, and we thought it’d make sense to open a butter store,” Keogh says. “We’d joke that someone would be at the front of the store churning butter, and you could come in and make your own flavor.”

Why butter? Southern hospitality, Keogh says. “I feel like I've always been surrounded by good food and good company. As I've grown up, I've come to love hosting and considering all the details of an event — how things look, how they’re served, and how a moment feels. In hindsight, I kept noticing how butter is always on the table, but it’s never thought about. And if I'm maximizing everything as a host, butter was just the next step.”

During the winter break of her senior year. Keogh found herself making butter in her family’s kitchen. “I remember how proud I was of making my first batch of butter that was maybe the size of a small clementine,” she says. “The first flavor I made at my house was lavender orange zest, and I served it on bread to my family that night.”

The experiment led her to dream up Debonair Butter Company, a business that will make butter the centerpiece of any event: small-batch, flavored butter in all shapes and sizes.

“Making butter for the first time made me realize I needed to use Penn’s resources when I got back to campus, not just for guidance, but for actual tools and equipment, like cheesecloth and a food processor,” she says. She did some digging and found the Food Innovation Lab, part of the Penn Venture Lab, a partnership between the Wharton School, Penn Engineering, and the Weitzman School of Design that helps Penn students develop entrepreneurial ideas, and decided to apply.

Preparing her pitch deck for the Venture Lab was thrilling, Keogh says. She credits her Communication major, data-focused concentration, and Consumer Psychology minor with giving her the foundational tools to build the pitch: lessons on how advertising shapes perception, how data tells a story. "It was exciting to ponder things like, 'What is my value proposition?  Who is my customer? And, how can I make butter a talking point around the table?" she says.

She presented her plans for Debonair Butter to Lauren Hooks, the Food Innovation Lab’s senior associate director, and Hooks laid out some of the opportunities offered by the lab: pathways to Whole Foods, a potential week in a Michelin-starred restaurant, access to an FDA food analyzer, connections to local dairy farmers, and guidance on whether to sell within state lines or take the business national. "I was so overwhelmed by the possibilities, in the best way," Keogh says. Since that meeting, Keogh has been in the Food Innovation Lab’s commercial kitchen every Wednesday and Friday, working out plans for her business. 

Her hard work culminated in a taste test at Wharton’s Lippincott Library this spring, where she brought four flavors — honey pistachio, blueberry sea salt, garlic parmesan, and rosemary thyme — for Penn students, faculty, and staff to sample. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, she says.

Keogh credits her Annenberg courses with giving her the ability to analyze the data she collected at the event and use it to envision a future for Debonair Butter. "How to Listen," taught by Associate Professor Julia Ticona, showed her how to conduct surveys and ask unbiased questions, she says, and "Common Sense vs. Data Science," taught by Professor Duncan Watts, helped her understand when to trust her instincts and when to let the numbers lead.

While she’s not ready for a Charleston storefront just yet, Keogh plans to offer small-batch, limited-edition flavored butter sticks very soon, as well as sculpted butter centerpieces for specific occasions and celebrations: a team logo for a football watch party or a seashell for a beach getaway, for example.

"I believe that butter deserves better,” she says. “Too often butter has been in the back of the fridge, forgotten, unseen, uncared about, when the fact of the matter is butter is the most important part of so many meals. My vision is to take a slightly elevated approach: flavored artisanal butter, then sculpt it into the centerpiece of an event. It’s not just butter: it’s an experience, a feeling, rooted in togetherness." 

After graduation, Keogh will head to New York City to work as a brand strategist for Sylvain, bringing Debonair Butter with her, growing it on the side as she finds her footing in the city.

"At the end of the day, building this business has been a really special experience to round out my four years at school,” she says. “I’m so grateful to have been admitted to Penn and to have had this incredible opportunity to take great classes with great professors alongside an incredible student body. What I’ve learned through Penn and Annenberg shows up in everything I pursue, even in the butter.”