It’s all about cooperation, quality and “freshness you can taste” at Westby Cooperative Creamery. Going into its 123rd year, the farmer-owned cooperative in the tiny town of Westby, Wis. (population 2,366) has been utilizing simple ingredients and the freshest milk from 94 local family dairy farms to churn out traditional and organic cottage cheese, bulk yogurt, sour cream, and French onion dips.

Nestled in the rolling hills of west central Wisconsin 35 miles southeast of La Crosse, Wis., Westby Cooperative Creamery was founded on October 31, 1903, with humble beginnings as a butter and dried milk producer. Since that time more than a century ago, the creamery has been delighting and “treating” its retail and online customers, contract manufacturers and private-label customers with a wide variety of cultured dairy products.

All told, the Westby cooperative manufacturers 132 SKUs across cottage cheese, sour cream and bulk yogurt from its 55,000-square-foot headquarters and distribution center, with the plant located a mile down the road.

“The bulk of our portfolio is our cottage cheese, we typically make 1.1 million pounds a month of the freshest, creamiest cottage cheese on the market,” notes JD Greenwalt, who has served as president and CEO of the creamery since April of 2023, taking over for Pete Kondrup, who retired after 19 years.

“Our cottage cheese is packaged with the Westby logo, but a major amount, 66%, goes out as a private-label brand so chances are if you’re buying cottage cheese around here, we probably made it,” Greenwalt explains. “The other two products we predominately make, are sour cream and bulk yogurt, between the two products, we make 1 million pounds a month using roughly 7.8 million pounds of fresh milk.”

Among the numerous awards the cooperative has captured for its famous 4% Small Curd Cottage Cheese are a Best of Class Gold Medal in the 2020 World Championship Cheese Contest and a First Place Gold Medal at the 2019 U.S. Championship Cheese Contest. Additionally, Westby’s 2% Low-Fat Small Curd Cottage Cheese garnered First Place honors in the Wisconsin Dairy Products Association World Dairy Expo Championship.

Westby Cooperative Creamery first began making its flagship cottage cheese in the early 1930s, and now produces five varieties of award-winning cottage cheese: Large Curd 4%, Small Curd 4%, Small Curd 4% Organic, Small Curd 2% Organic, and Small Curd 2% which are packaged in 24-, 16-, 12- and 8-ounce containers. Cottage cheese sales and volume are brisk for its organic and traditional cottage cheese. The creamery also produces a dry curd cottage cheese and some 6% cottage cheese.

“The low-fat 2% and 4% varieties of our cottage cheese are our biggest movers, covering 70% of our total production. We can’t make enough product. We’re running 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Greenwalt tells Dairy Foods. “We are the only plant in the entire state of Wisconsin that makes cottage cheese. All of our cottage cheese from our 4% small curd cottage cheese to our 2% small curd organic cottage cheese, and every cottage cheese in-between, is made from Grade-A and rBST-free conventional-milk and certified-organic-milk delivered daily from our family dairy farm member-owners.”

Gesturing to one of two huge maps with red, blue and green dots all around, Greenwalt points out that more than half of the four-, five- and even six-generation family farmers, approximately 66 patrons, are bringing in 6 million pounds of organic milk a month from a radius of 100 miles throughout Wisconsin with some pull from Minnesota. More than 3.5 million pounds of conventional raw milk, on the other hand, is brought in monthly from dairy farms within a 30-mile radius.  

“It’s interesting because we’re taking in more organic milk than traditional milk. About 40% to 45% of our portfolio is made with organic milk,” Greenwalt relays. “We call all our farmers patrons because each gets a vote in making decisions to purchase equipment, to expand operations, and the like. We wouldn’t be in business without their dedication and commitment 365 days a year.”

Dairy business is daily business

Noting that the “dairy business is a daily business,” Greenwalt praises the businessmen and women, the family farmers and their sons and daughters, who are responsible for bringing sustainable Wisconsin-made dairy products to Wisconsin, the United States, and around the world.

“Most of the farms we partner with are small, milking around 50 to 80 grazing Jersey and Holstein cows that all have names because they’re cared for like family members,” Greenwalt shares. In fact, the creamery’s website at www.westbycreamery.com spotlights the inspirational stories of nearly 20 farmers/patrons who are proud Wisconsin dairy farmers.

A viable part of the local agricultural economy, Westby Cooperative Creamery, part of Vernon County, Wis., is one of several cooperatives Dairy Foods saw on a short drive down Westby’s quaint Main Street. This included the Westby Coop Credit Union and Vernon Communications Cooperative. The name “Westby” has Scandinavian roots and is sometimes referred to as “Co-op City” because of the strong tradition of cooperative businesses that call Westby home.

With this rich heritage and history propelling it forward, today the creamery distributes 7% of its 132 SKUs under the colorful blue and red logo proclaiming “Since 1903 Farmer Owned.” The Westby brand is sold primarily in Midwest grocery stores, food co-ops, and convenience stores.

The creamery also is able to drive sales of its specialty cheese, cottage cheese, sour cream and other dairy products at the Westby Cheese Shop at 206 South Main Street, which opened in its new location in 2019. It is managed by Westby native Stef Schroeder, who has been with the cooperative for 12 years, noting that her parents also worked at the creamery and now her son, Paxton Tollackson, is a retail associate at the store.

Other channels of distribution include private-label manufacturing (comprising three quarters of the creamery’s annual revenue of $65 million); co-packing for more than 50 companies, making products to exact specifications; food ingredients, foodservice (schools, healthcare and restaurants), and online (complete with a new downloadable Retail Store Catalog).

“We sell our cultured dairy products and ingredients coast-to-coast,” he explains. “We sell a lot of our private-label products to California, Upper New York, and one of our customers delivers cultured tang into their ethnic products being delivered to Eastern European communities on the East Coast of the U.S.”

Distribution-wise, about 1% of products are being exported to South Korea and Latin America, where the demand for cultured products is hot, according to the CEO.

Yet, the proposed Trump tariffs could negatively impact manufacturing operations. “It’s going to cost us millions to pay for those tariffs,” Greenwalt says. “We have quoted out new equipment from both the EU and from Canada and if they impose a 25% tariff on that, that's $2 million.  That’s $2 million that my farmers have to pay. I can recoup it, but it means a lot of conversations with my finance partners.”

The CEO notes that the process to make cottage cheese and sour cream is far more labor-intensive than producing cheddar cheese, which has a 5-hour turnaround time.

The co-ops thick and tangy, award-winning sour cream and organic sour cream is handcrafted in 12 to 14 hours, he adds. Westby produces about 60,000 pounds of sour cream each month.

Yet, a full 16 hours is required for Westby’s small and large curd cottage cheese to fully set and develop its creamy texture. Cottage cheese is made by heating whole milk to 98 degrees Fahrenheit, coagulating or “setting” the milk into a solid curd (in this case with animal rennet), and then gently cooking the set curd until it soft and bouncy, he explains.  

The creamery uses a 5-pound Scholle bulk filler three days a week that can fill three 14-pound bags or 1.5 cases a minute/90 cases an hour that are shipped out to hundreds of Hilton hotels across the United States.

“If you look at the self-serve yogurt machine at any Hilton hotel, you’ll see our logo,” Greenwalt proudly says. “We’re growing that side of the business. And we have to modernize our equipment to meet the demand for cottage cheese.

“Cottage cheese is a huge mainstay for us, and the category is growing [from $91.4 billion globally in 2022 to $149.4 billion by 2030 per Mintel] because it contains a lot of protein. Our current facility is maxed out and aged,” he continues. “Most of our equipment is 40, 5,0 and 60 years old, but we’re in active discussions to modernize it and add more capacity. It could more than triple our growth.”

For more information, see the sidebar below and “Inside the Plant” in this issue.

The ease of squeeze 

Designed to make Taco Tuesday and dispensing sour cream easier with less mess and less waste, the cooperative has perfected the packaging of its sour cream in 14-ouch squeezable pouches, a rapidly growing market for creamery operations and packaging.

“There's not a lot of manufacturing for cottage cheese and sour cream, and the trend is that more and more customers want the pouch,” Greenwalt explains. “That gives us an advantage because not many manufacturers are doing this.”

He notes that Westby’s new partnership with a national grocery store chain will involve testing the private-label version of the 14-ounce squeezable pouch in three markets: Kansas, Texas, and Maryland.  

As for his new position at Westby, Greenwalt, who grew up on a small farmstead in Walcott, Iowa, believes his past positions — half on the dairy side and half on the beverage side at Pepsi and Coca-Cola  — have prepared him to lead Westby Cooperative Creamery onward and upward.

For instance, he worked as a factory frontline worker at Iowa City-based General Mills before being promoted to supervisor; built a $250 million plant from the ground up at Slim Fast Foods in Tucson, Ariz.; and held management positions at HP Hood and Berner Foods.

Yet, Greenwalt notes that running Westby Cooperative Creamery is a full circle moment.

“This is a phenomenal business. The milk supply, being farmer owned, I think, really sets us apart from a manufacturing standpoint because what we do matters. Those dots on the wall aren’t just dots on the wall, they’re people’s livelihoods,” he concludes. “We’re going to keep this coop going another 120 years. We’ll modernize the equipment and continue to keep personal safety, food safety, and food quality at the forefront of our business. We’re going to make sure our family-farmers are successful because when they’re successful, we are too.”