Tag: Philadelphia

Stefanie Angstadt of Oley started making cheese as a hobby soon after graduating from college in 2008.

After a few years she knew it was something she wanted to do full time.

She opened Valley Milkhouse in a former dairy farm in Oley in 2014 and began to manufacture and sell her cheeses professionally.

Not a dairy farmer, herself, she partnered with some small Berks County dairies to buy fresh warm milk “straight from the udder.”

Her cheeses – mostly a mix of softer and aged styles – were a hit.

“We make everything by hand. It’s very good cheese so there is a demand,” Angstadt said.

In fact, demand often outpaced her supply. Nonetheless, she struggled with the logistics of getting the cheese she was making to the people who wanted it.

While around 80 percent of the cheese she makes is sold wholesale to markets and restaurants, profits were much higher on the 20 percent of the product she was selling at her farm stand and the two farmers markets she attends, the Easton Farmers Market in downtown Easton and one in Philadelphia.

“The question was, how do we reach these people who want to buy our cheese without standing there at a farmers market all day – sometimes in the rain – hoping the right people will come buy it?” she said.

Organizing principal

In 2016, as fate would have it, an old friend of Angstadt’s, Alex Jones, a prominent organizer of community-supported agriculture programs in the Greater Philadelphia area, had just left a job with a CSA.

In a typical CSA, a group of farmers connect with a group of consumers who want to buy fresh, local produce. They sell shares of their future crop to the consumers, who then pick up weekly or monthly boxes of the farmers’ latest crops, sharing both the risk and the rewards of the farmers’ season and giving those farmers a more reliable source of income for their farms.

“My job was to buy products from dozens of local farmers,” Jones said.

She was looking to take her CSA skills and use them in a new way.  She thought of Angstadt and another cheesemaker she had met in her old job: Sue Miller of Birchrun Hills Farm in Chester County.

Jones pitched the idea of using the CSA format to develop a new way of selling craft cheese to cheese fans. That led Jones, Angstadt and Miller in 2016 to create the Collective Creamery CSA, based out of Angstadt’s Oley creamery, with Jones as the operations manager and Angstadt and Miller as the two primary cheese makers.

“We thought between the three of us, we could pool our resources and move beyond farmers markets,” Angstadt said.

According to Jones, the trio didn’t invent the idea of a cheese-based CSA. But, she said, “A cheese CSA is still pretty unique.”

Jones said it also makes sense.

“You can get subscriptions for anything today – dog products, beauty products – why not cheese?” she said.

A profitable boost

The Collective Creamery is now heading into its third year. And while it is still just a small part of each of the cheesemakers’ business it is an important one.

By eliminating the middleman, the cheesemakers get more of the profit.

Angstadt said her profit margin is generally about 15 percent to 20 percent on the roughly $150,000 in gross sales she has in a year. That makes it a challenge to maintain a capital-intensive operation. Anywhere she can improve the profit margin is a boost.

Profits on the CSA vary from month to month, but she said they tend to average at the higher end of her overall profits.

The current CSA package from the Collective Creamery ranges from $180 for a once-a-month pickup of two pounds and four varieties of cheese for four months to $280 for a twice-monthly pickup of one-and-a-half pounds and three varieties of cheese for four months. CSA packages generally run from five to six months. The current package is shortened since the current CSA season has already begun.

Customers pick up their orders at participating locations. Most are businesses that focus on local craft foods and products like farm stands or craft brewers, which support “buy local” efforts.

Having a variety of pickup locations in the region helps the Collective’s members spread their cheese sales farther than they could on their own.

Subscriptions can be picked up in two Berks County locations – Hidden River Brewing Co. in Douglasville and Covered Bridge Farmstand in Oley – and at one location in the Lehigh Valley – Bonn Place Brewing Co. in Bethlehem. Other pickup locations are in the Chester County and Philadelphia areas.

By having a wider client base, the cheesemakers also are able to offer more variety. Angstadt and Miller rotate between the six varieties of cheese, including Angstadt’s Witchgrass, her version of a French Valencay cheese, and Miller’s Clipper, an aged raw-milk cheese.  They also reach out to other cheesemakers in other regions, hoping to include their specialty craft cheeses in the CSA to give customers more options.

For example, Miller is currently working with a sheep farmer to blend sheep and cow milk together to make a creamy Camembert-style cheese with a unique taste.

“Together we can come up with a greater variety,” Angstadt said.

Ultimately, their goal is to turn cheese lovers into die-hard cheese fans.

“We want to cultivate the cheese culture in this area like it is in Europe. We don’t want people to see cheese as a guilty pleasure, but as a food you eat every day,” Angstadt said. “This is a way to grow the cheese community.

“People don’t see fine cheese as a necessity,” added Jones. “When they go to the grocery store they feel they have to get produce and bread … we want them to think of fine cheese like that, not as a luxury.”

Miller sees the craft cheese industry growing in much the same way the craft beer industry has developed and grown, with those in the industry working cooperatively instead of competitively to boost the entire industry by sharing tips and efforts.

“It’s the whole ‘a rising tide raises all ships’ kind of thing,” she said. “We all benefit from a stronger cheese industry.”

Jones said the trio is focused on being a regional leader in the craft cheese industry. They aren’t planning any major expansion. But they are on the lookout for more pick-up locations along their current route and for pockets of cheese lovers who may want to get in on their offerings.

“We have to be lean and use the resources we have,” Jones said.

One secondary benefit to the women’s local craft cheese making is the small boost it gives to the region’s dairy farmers, which Angstadt said are struggling with low prices on the commodities market.

She said there is a dairy crisis across the nation.

According to the National Family Farm Foundation, America has lost over half its dairy farmers in just the last sixteen years, as wholesale dairy prices have dropped to below 1970 prices.

“Because of the quality I demand I pay a premium for the milk,” she said.

Her sources include Spring Creek Farm in Wernersville, an organic dairy farm.

Greg Stricker, a partner in Spring Creek, said he pays special attention to the milk he produces for Angstadt.

“I always try to make the highest-quality milk, but we try to concentrate on making a milk that is higher in protein and butter fat to make her cheeses,” Stricker said.

Stricker said the extra money a cheesemaker like Angstadt is willing to pay represents a needed boost for small farms like his.

Stricker said the higher price helps, in part, to offset low commodity prices.

“It’s a huge benefit to us when a local business like that uses our product,” he said. “It’s essential to find someone making a higher-end product to compete.”

Editor’s note: The caption on the photo of the three women who run the Collective Creamery has been updated to reflect the correct name of the person on the right. An earlier version incorrectly stated Alex Jones’s last name.