St., on April 6, 2009 by a very pleasant couple named Tim and Jennifer Donnelly. They live in the South Loop now but are proud natives of Beverly.

Even before they married in 2005 they were thinking about their shared future and nurturing a dream that they might one day own their own business.

He was an electrician and the nephew of the late Therese Fox, who owned Fox's Beverly Pub. He started working there when he was 12 and knew his way around a kitchen.

"We both loved popcorn," says Jennifer. "We spent a lot of time experimenting."

And so it was popcorn — easy to make, hospitable to various flavors — that gave them the idea of opening a store.

Jennifer, who teaches art at the Dawes Elementary School on theSouthwest Side, took business classes in her spare time and together the couple started searching "well, everywhere, all over the city and suburbs," before settling on a new apartment building complex.

"We knew we had made the right choice when we opened and a woman came in and, almost with tears in her eyes, said, 'I never thought I'd ever see another store like this in my neighborhood'," says Tim, who works full-time at the store. "She had lived in Bronzeville her whole life and saw things when they were good and when they got bad. She was so happy."

Mother Butter's shares the building's retail space with some other businesses, such as a Starbucks. Though any new business is a good thing for an under-served area, it is non-franchise