Sliced bread is synonymous with innovation, but really, how wonderful is it if a chilled pat of butter can trash a piece of pumpernickel toast? Fortunately, a trio of Australian designers—Craig Andrews, Sacha Pantschenko, and Norman Oliveria—have come together to revamp breakfast with a new knife/grater combo that can transform a densely packed brick of butter into easily spreadable strands of creamy delight.

The trio was batting around ideas for new products over toast and tea one morning when Oliveria cracked a dish trying to carve a thin slice of butter. In the clatter of trashed ceramics, inspiration for what would come to be called the Butterup struck. “We considered several ideas, from new containers and alternative packaging to the age old approach of applying heat, none of which had much appeal,” says Pantschenko. “The idea to grate butter was certainly something we considered, but to build it into a spreading blade was a light bulb moment.”

Pantschenko’s only concern was that the idea felt too obvious. “We thought this was such a simple solution there must have been something out there that was forgotten many years ago,” he says. “All we could find were butter curlers and a few crazy contraptions, none of which had the ability to collect butter and spread it like a regular knife.” After a vigorous session of Googling, it seemed that no one from Paul Revere to Williams-Sonoma had come up with as elegant a solution—though to be fair to America’s greatest silversmith, refrigerated butter is a relatively modern invention.