RACINE, WIS.  — John Buhler has been named president of Butter Buds Food Ingredients. The change comes as Bill Buhler steps down and moves toward retirement, although he will continue as president emeritus and will be involved in special projects within the family-owned company.

“I am happy to embrace retirement and rest easy knowing that our family legacy is in great hands with John as president and my brother Tom continuing as director of business development,” Bill Buhler said. “I guess you could say John has been training for the president role his entire career, graduating with a law degree from the University of Wisconsin, and having previously headed up our international and domestic sales as we developed our global network of sales and distribution, leading marketing efforts and much more.”

Racine-based Butter Buds Food Ingredients manufactures concentrated dairy flavors made from fresh butter, cream and cheese. The company also offers a line of flavor concentrates with unique flavor characteristics: Butter Buds-Bacon, Olive Oil Buds, CocoaButter Buds and dried beer extract.

“We are very proud of the growth Butter Buds has experienced under Bill’s leadership,” John Buhler said. “We have tripled in size —expanding our workforce, applications capabilities, quality assurance and regulatory expertise to best meet the needs of our expanding customer partnerships — so that today Butter Buds is a global leader in concentrated dairy and flavor ingredients.

“Now as I take the reins of this fantastic company, I can’t help but look back at the work our father began 40 years ago.  We have always been a family-owned company that values our greatest assets — our people, pushing for growth in new applications and innovative product development, and I can assure everyone that will not change.”