A 51-second cruise-ship video unexpectedly reaches a million people in Argentina, bringing an Omaha couple to the home of the family behind the butter
OMAHA, Neb. (October 7, 2026). It started with a pat of butter.
While having lunch aboard a Royal Caribbean cruise in February, Omaha small business owner and content creator Kurt Goetzinger took a bite of butter, stopped, and told the people near his table how much he liked it. He then propped his phone against a condiment container and recorded a 51-second, one-take video about it.
He thought he was simply sharing something he had discovered.
Instead, Argentina found him.
The video, posted to Instagram on February 4, went on to receive approximately 1 million views, more than 61,000 likes, nearly 4,000 comments and more than 31,000 shares. The remarkable part was not just the size of the response. Goetzinger had only a few thousand followers.
People in Argentina were fascinated by the attention the video received and repeatedly asked how someone with such a relatively small following could generate such enormous reach and engagement. The answer, Goetzinger says, is simple.
“I make these videos because I genuinely get excited about things I discover,” he said. “I think people can tell when something comes from the heart.”
The butter was Tonadita, a well-known Argentine brand produced by family-owned Elcor S.A. in Villa María, Córdoba. Goetzinger had not tagged the company, tagged Argentina or even added an Argentine hashtag to his post. His five hashtags were all related to cruising and travel.
Yet the video quickly spread throughout Argentina. National and regional media covered the unexpected American fan of Argentine butter, and commenters began encouraging Tonadita to bring him to Argentina.
The company eventually did exactly that.
Eight months after the original video, Goetzinger and his wife, Jenny, flew from Omaha to Argentina as guests of Tonadita and Elcor. They spent a week traveling through Buenos Aires and Córdoba, toured the Tonadita manufacturing plant, visited a dairy farm, met the people who make the product and experienced Argentine food and culture firsthand.
But the trip became about much more than butter.
The couple was welcomed into the home of the Piazza family, which owns Elcor, for a traditional asado. Three generations of the family were there, including company founder Reinaldo Piazza, who began his career collecting cream from dairy farms in the 1960s, and third-generation general manager Santiago Piazza.
By the end of the week, the Omaha couple had formed friendships with members of the Piazza family, Tonadita employees and Argentines they had first encountered through the original video.
“I went to Argentina because of a pat of butter,” Goetzinger said. “But the butter became almost secondary. What happened because of that video was much bigger. We met people who welcomed us into their country, into their homes and ultimately into their lives.”
The welcome extended well beyond the company. After the original video spread, Argentines began inviting Goetzinger and his wife to stay in their homes. Dozens of people reached out, many simply wanting to show an American visitor their country and share the things they loved about Argentina.
During the October visit, Goetzinger was also recognized by strangers on the streets as the “Butter Man” or the “Tonadita Guy.”
For Goetzinger, the experience reinforced something he has believed throughout his career in marketing: people respond to genuine enthusiasm.
“I wasn’t trying to sell anything,” he said. “I wasn’t being paid to make that video. I just really love the butter. Somebody asked me at the press conference in Argentina how much Tonadita was paying me, and the answer was nothing. The trip was reward enough.”
Goetzinger returned to Omaha on October 6 with hundreds of photographs and videos documenting the trip, along with a new appreciation for a country he had known primarily through a single food product.
He also brought something less tangible home.
“In some ways, I feel a little bit Argentine now,” he said. “I went there as the guy who made a video about butter. I came home with friends.”
The original video remains the story’s starting point. What began as an ordinary moment on a cruise ship became an unexpected connection between an Omaha couple and a major Argentinian brand, community, and family thousands of miles away.
And it all started with one man taking a bite of butter and deciding to tell people he loved it.
