Episode Details

Takeaways

• Starting a food business on family land works best when you do something different with what the farm already produces.
• Food marketing and storytelling matter as much as food science, because anyone can make a product but selling it is the real skill.
• Working for other specialty food companies first is a smart way to learn the good and the bad of an industry before launching your own brand.
• Using every product a farm creates, from cheese and milk to yogurt and whey spirits, reduces waste and builds new revenue streams.

Summary of the episode

In Part 1 of this Ice Cream Social conversation, host David Boyer talks with Alise Sjostrom, founder of Redhead Creamery in Central Minnesota. They open with David's favorite question, what your favorite ice cream flavor was at six years old. Alise says chocolate cherry, and it is still her go-to flavor today. David shares his own childhood favorite, ordered from the milkman in Montana.

Alise explains how Redhead Creamery grew out of her family's dairy farm, now in its 13th or 14th year. As the third of four redheads, she always wanted to be part of the farm but wanted to do something different. A visit to a farm cheese operation during her senior year of high school showed her she could make something she loved from her family's own milk.

She shares the advice from her University of Minnesota food science advisor, who pushed her toward food marketing so she would know how to sell what she made. After college she worked for a food broker, moved to Vermont for her husband's job, sold cheese at Grafton Village Cheese, and later worked for a cheese company in Wisconsin, learning the industry before building her own.

Today the farm produces cheese, creamline whole milk, a drinkable yogurt, and spirits made from whey. Alise's goal is to use every product the farm creates. Part 2 continues the story.

https://www.jupitermoonicecream.com/