Other Company
Profiles/News on our Website
Nelson-Ricks Celebrates Centennial With Rollout Of
New Specialty Cheese Line Download
PDF of Story
Bredls’ Harmony Specialty Dairy To Stabilize Farm Price By Making Value-Added Cheese
Download
PDF of Story
BelGioioso Targets Evolving Market With Products From Fresh Mozzarella To Premium Parmesan
Download
PDF of Story
Palatine Cheese Quietly Fills Niche
Market For Flavored Cheddar That ‘The Big Guys’ Can’t Download
pdf of story
Vermont’s Thistle Hill Farm
Models Award-Winning Tarentaise After Alpine Cheeses; Was ‘Love At First Sight’
Download
pdf of story
With Southwest Cheese Running Near Capacity, Leaders Eye International Market, Increased National Cheddar Consumption; Displacement of Other Cheddar Manufacturers May Occur
Download
pdf of story
Three Entrepreneurs Open Artisan Creamery In WA Seaside Town, Develop Line Of Soft-Ripened Cheeses For Pacific Northwest Market
Download
pdf of story
Three Dairy Grazier Families Form Edelweiss Co-op to Manufacture Grass-Based Cheese
Maine Welcomes Mid-Coast Cheese Co.;
Eastern Seaboard Has A
New Source For Traditional Teleme Download
pdf of story
Seymour Dairy Products
Looking to Get Back in the Black
by Making the Blues Download
pdf of story
Creamery Operations, Quality Cheese, Educational Opportunites at
WSU: World Class. Face to Face Download
pdf of story
Pineland
Farms: Maine Specialty Cheese Start-Up
Aims To Provide
‘Ultimate Classroom’ For Visitors Download
pdf of story
Parkers Farm Seeing Sales
of Its Cold Pack Cheese Food
Nearly Double; Quality, Value Come Standard Download
pdf of story
Willamette Valley Cheese
Helping Put Oregon’s Artisan Cheesemaking on Map As It Produces Award-Winning Farmstead Cheeses
Download pdf of story Leelanau Cheese Marks
10-Year Anniversary; Strives To Keep Up With Demand For Award Winning Raclette
Download pdf of story
Heini’s Bunker Hill’s Yogurt Cheese Discovering New Markets, From Roadside Stands to Gourmet Retailers
Download pdf of story
Well-Known Authority On Italian-Style
Cheese Guiding New Family-Owned
Wisconsin Cheese Plant Download
pdf of story
Edelweiss
Town Hall Prepares To
Wheel Out Traditional Swiss Cheese Download
pdf of story
|
After
A Year Under New Ownership, Heritage Cheese Looks For More Local Milk
Suppliers
Heuvelton, NY—Just
over one year after an Amish trust took over ownership of the former Heritage
Cheese House, the New York Cheddar manufacturer is looking for more milk
suppliers and thinking of expanding its cheese line.
Heritage Cheese House was established in 1995 by previous owner David
H. O’Neil, Jr., after farmers were dropped by Plumbrook Amish Farms,
a Norfolk cheese maker.
In July 2006, O’Neil made the decision to suspend milk pickups to 95 Amish farms and cheese production because the company wasn’t getting enough money for cheese on the retail market to stay competitive, O’Neil
said.
Amish milk suppliers were left without a place to ship their milk, said Stephanie LaShomb, sales and marketing manager for Heritage Cheese.
The company is now owned by Heuvelton Community Irrevocable Trust, a not-for-profit trust of members formed from an Amish community. It is against Amish religion to outright own and operate a company, so the committee pooled its money and commissioned three English trustees and three members from the Amish community to run the business.
Ron Kiah serves as plant manager, overseeing the 7,000-square-foot facility that employs 17 workers. Three people have been hired to make cheese, including head cheese maker Del Petrie. Although the cheese plant is owned by an Amish trust, no one from the Amish community works at the facility.
Heritage Cheese curd is made exclusively from locally-produced Amish milk.
Supply is down right now because of the season, LaShomb said. Cows are
beginning to freshen, so we obviously can’t accept that milk. Supplier
numbers have decreased to about 75 farms, she said.
For upgrades, Heritage Cheese last summer installed a chiller to cool the milk before being transferred to a holding tank.
Cheese is made year-round, six days a week – between 700 to 1,500
pounds of cheese daily.
Heritage Cheese manufactures its New York Cheddar primarily for retail sales; it also sells to larger companies that buy truckloads of cheese, LaShomb said. Additionally, the company is looking to experiment with making cheese other than Cheddar.
Our cheese is a locally-made, natural product, LaShomb said. It’s not organic, but it’s all-natural. While plans to make a conversion to organic production aren’t
in the near future, they remain in the back of our minds, she continued.
The company has a retail store-front at its Heuvelton facility where it sells cheese and other Amish-manufactured products.
Marketed under the “Heritage Cheese” brand (formerly “Heritage Cheese House”), the company’s
line of products is also available at local grocery stores and community
co-ops throughout New York State.
Our cheese is made the old-fashioned way, LaShomb said. We’re not
a mass-production plant, and everything is hand-cut.
“Our employees really take a lot of pride in our product,” she
continued.
Since the trust was established just over a year ago, the biggest hurdle for the company has been milk production, LaShomb said.
“We could always use more milk,” she said.I’m sure most New York State cheese plants have their struggles, Kiah said. Right this minute, I can’t
see an increase in consumer demand for cheese.
“We’re trying to sell our blocks and actually, it’s pretty tough,” Kiah said. “If we had all the milk we needed, we could sell up to three tractor-trailer loads a month – but we couldn’t
make it that fast.”
“We could get rid of a trailer-load a month, probably, if we had the milk supply,” he
continued.
The possibility of future expansion has been discussed, LaShomb added.
“If we’re able to receive more milk, we could add personnel,” she
said.
While Heritage Cheese is open to the idea of buying milk from suppliers
other than Amish, LaShomb said the company still won’t accept milk
from cows treated with synthetic bovine growth hormone.
Over the next five years, Kiah said he would like to see an eventual overhaul
of the facility, with upgraded equipment. But Heritage Cheese has a great
team of workers and if it wasn’t for them, the company wouldn’t
be here, he continued.
For more details, contact Heritage Cheese at (315) 344-2216. Orders can
be faxed to (315) 323-0950. •
|
