Business Background
The Stearns family farm in Mansfield was started in 1772 as a typical diversified operation of that era, with livestock, mulberry trees, and other crops. In 1871, milk delivery was started by Jared Stearns using a horse and milk wagon. The farm has been continuously operated as a dairy producer since then, and 2023 is marked by 152 years of milk production and processing. Mountain Dairy (legal name Willard J. Stearns & Sons, Inc.) is considered one of a handful of producer handlers in the country.
The farm is comprised of 1,000 acres, which are predominantly located in Mansfield. Additional acreage in Windham and Canterbury CT, some of which is leased, is used to meet production needs. Of this land, 758 acres have been permanently preserved. Around 500 cows are milked, and the farm’s own young stock is raised, with approximately 700 cows and heifers in total. The herd is made up of Holsteins, Jerseys, and Brown Swiss.
Dairy Processing: Mountain Dairy processes all of its own milk which works out to about 26,900 gallons of milk are processed per week, which is about 1.4 million gallons per year. As soon as the milk is bottled, it is stored in the cooler. The plant is operated four days per week; Wednesday is generally reserved for maintenance. Operations are conducted on Wednesdays and Saturdays as needed. The garage bays are attached to the cooler so that the cold chain is protected and milk quality is preserved.
The fact that the farm has its own plant means that Mountain milk is often processed within 12 hours of production, which allows flavor and freshness to be preserved. Milk, cream, flavored milk (chocolate, coffee, and strawberry), soft serve mix, and seasonal eggnog are processed.
Wholesale and retail distribution are offered by Mountain Dairy. Home delivery was re-started during the pandemic after an eight-year hiatus. There has been massive attrition of dairy farms throughout the US over the last two-three decades. Mountain Dairy is one of just 85 dairy farms remaining in Connecticut, down from around 500 in 1990. As a producer-processor, our business has managed to survive a low point in the dairy industry because more of the end consumer’s dollar is able to be captured than by dairy farms that sell their milk as a raw commodity.
In order for viability to be maintained, the Stearns family has decided that they must continue to innovate and offer new and exciting products to their customers. After a great deal of deliberation, it was determined that the next step for their business was to expand on their core competency of bottling fluid milk and pursue sales of finished ice cream as a higher margin product offering than fluid milk.
As part of the initial stage of starting this new initiative Mountain Dairy assessed whether an investment in ice cream making equipment and facilities were worthwhile. They utilized financial planning tools such as net present value (NPV) to help them determine whether resources spent on this enterprise would be more or less valuable than other options for reinvesting in their business (such as a new milking parlor, milk cooler, etc.). They also researched the drivers of the ice cream market and evaluated whether they were well-positioned to grow the Mountain Dairy brand into the ice cream category. The following outline of important considerations for those planning for an ice cream business was prepared by Sarah Cornelisse, Senior Extension Program Specialist at Penn State:
Once this preliminary analysis was complete, Mountain Dairy applied for and received a grant from the Northeast Dairy Business Innovation Center (NE DBIC) to purchase key equipment to start processing ice cream.
As part of this proposal, the Stearns family recognized that they had a great opportunity to help others to learn about and evaluate the option of starting an ice cream business. The proportion of dairy farms that are replicating Mountain Dairy’s structure to become producer-processors has swelled in recent years. For that reason, the family members decided to also request funding as part of the grant project to create a series of trainings and educational materials intended to help other dairy farms and other ice cream entrepreneurs develop high profit products by having our experience documented. For more background on Mountain Dairy’s core fluid milk business you can review this slideshow:
You can see Mountain Dairy’s fluid milk plant at work in the video below!
Getting Started in Ice Cream
As the Stearns family began thinking seriously about making ice cream and was awarded a grant from NE DBIC for equipment, the group began meeting regularly via Zoom to discuss next steps. Initially, the team members met with some challenges. For instance, they had initially intended to purchase a vat-pasteurizer to process the fluid ice cream base (or “mix”). This selection was agreed upon because vat-pasteurized mix is understood by many to be an excellent option for imparting favorable sensory characteristics into the ice cream such as a pleasant and sweet “cooked” flavor.
However, as the company President and CEO, Craig Stearns, did more research and spoke with professionals from UConn’s dairy plant, he realized that excellent mix could be made using Mountain Dairy’s existing Hight Temperature Short Time (HTST) system with some modifications to handle the increased pressure from running highly viscous ice cream mix. Utilizing the HTST would be more efficient since the HTST is a continuous flow system and it would also save on floorspace and limit disruptions from avoiding the need to install a new piece of equipment in the plant while it is actively operating. Craig also considered utilizing a continuous freezer rather than a batch freezer since this piece of equipment would be more efficient.
Also, the walk-in freezer the original plan to buy a walk-in freezer began to appear unworkable as it would block a loading bay for the delivery trucks coming in and out of the milk plant. Given the plant’s layout the walk-in would have to be located a fairly long distance from the batch freezer. This would mean that workers making ice cream would need to quickly lug soft serve consistency ice cream through a working milk plant, into the milk cooler, and then into the walk-in freezer to get the ice cream in storage and start the hardening process before it melted and gained negative textural qualities from melting then refreezing. This could also pose challenges from the perspective of contamination of the frozen product, as it moved through various zones in the plant.
The realities of what it would mean to operate a relatively large scale fluid milk business, driven mostly by sales to wholesale partners, alongside a more modestly scaled retail oriented ice cream business was beginning to be a strain in the family’s planning calls. It was hard to envision how this was project would be carried out.
As the family did more research, things started to fall into place. An opportunity arose to lease a building on a property adjacent to Mountain Dairy that could serve as an ice cream shop. The building had an existing permit for a previous farmstand that had been operated there. It also had a stunning view of Mountain Dairy’s cropland. The family got together for a walk-through of the space. The members determined that a production room could be constructed inside of the retail space with a viewing window. That way the finished ice cream could be produced at the shop while the mix was produced at Mountain Dairy’s milk plant just two miles down the road!
This helped to clarify the questions around how the processing should take place and what equipment would be appropriate. Upgrading the HTST clearly was a more appropriate choice than installing a new vat-pasteurizer because of the space savings and efficiency gains. Purchasing a continuous freezer was not practical since it would occupy too much space for the shop to accommodate, would produce more ice cream than Mountain Dairy had a market for, and would be many times more expensive than purchasing a batch freezer.
Finally, the problem of determining what to purchase for hardening and storing the finished ice cream became clear. It was now obvious that a walk-in freezer was more cumbersome than the leased ice cream shop space could accommodate. The family therefore decided to purchase a hardening cabinet which was the size of a large commercial kitchen freezer with French doors and could therefore easily fit in the proposed processing room. The project had developed a great deal from the initial plan.
Planning for a New Shop and Processing Space
The prospect of opening a new shop came with a whole host of questions beyond those that had been answered regarding what equipment to use. For one, the owner of the property and landlord, John, had a major stake in the project. The building that would house the new shop consisted of a large historic gambrel roofed barn with a newer annex addition behind the barn. The water access, heating/cooling, and electricity for the annex were updated, but the main barn was not. The shop and processing would all need to happen in this space.
The annex was very open with decorative post-and-beam supports. A new room would need to be constructed with floor drainage, washable walls, water hookups and outlets. A counter would need to be constructed with a freezer cabinet for scooping ice cream (called a “dipping cabinet”). Plans for how the space should flow needed to be made. What door should customers enter? Where should they sit? Where would they order? How would the menu be displayed? Would they come inside or order at a quick pickup window, or both?
To answer all of these questions the team formed a committee consisting of the Stearns family members interested in pursuing the project as well as John. Since the improvements being made would be in a building John owned, he agreed to share in the costs. The committee decided to engage the services of a local architect Dimitri Brand of Holesum Studio. After an initial planning call, where the committee decided on a concept for the space, Dimitri made a three-dimensional rendering of proposed designs:
The designs were beautiful, and they fit with the initial concept of drawing upon Mountain Dairy’s historic brand (which used red and yellow as its colors) with it’s modern logo (which was blue and white). The reference point for the space was meant to be a soda fountain from the 40’s or 50’s. However, as the committee weighed the design in their minds, they began to have second thoughts. They were concerned that the reintroduction of the old colors in combination with the new might run the risk of complicating the Mountain Dairy brand. Would customers wonder whether the new enterprise was one in the same as the historic dairy farm it was adjacent to if the visual identity was different?
The team worked closely with Dimitri to resolve this tension and eventually they arrived on a look that they felt would be in keeping with the history of the brand and would pay homage to the historic barn the ice cream shop was to be housed in:
With a design for the space in hand the project was coming into focus. Simultaneous with this, the committee was working to make lots of other decisions. Together made decisions on the list of tasks that needed to be completed and they worked to assign tasks to team members based on experience and talents. They kept this process moving in a weekly meeting with an agenda with a list of action items and topics for discussion that everyone could add onto. Assigning committee members clear tasks helped to keep the project moving forward as quickly as possible in between weekly meetings. A simple template like the one linked to below from the University of Wisconsin’s Extension Service is helpful for ensuring that meetings stay focused and that key topics for discussion aren’t missed (https://farms.extension.wisc.edu/files/2023/11/Cultivating-Your-Farms-Planning-to-Plan-1.pdf).
Dividing Responsibilities
The team needed to plan and accomplish goals across several areas all simultaneously. First a business plan needed to be developed two family members with background working with farmers on business planning collaborated on a business plan. There are many resources for developing business plans. Starting with a simple template and adapting it to your region and particular circumstances is the best way to proceed. Here is a fairly detailed resource for developing a retail ice cream business plan.
The team also had to manage several permitting processes. The ice cream shop barn had been utilized as a farmstand previously, and there were existing permits from the previous owner that could be extended. The shop could continue to be operated as a farm stand since the ice cream being made was a farmstead product. However, some of the terms of these permits were restrictive. For instance a hearing needed to be held in order to determine whether hours could be extended later into the evening in summers. Some neighbors were not happy with the prospect of this new business and complained about the increased traffic and the number of people that would be visiting the property once the shop was opened. Compromise and patience on the part of family members and their business partner were needed to navigate this process without alienating community members and decision makers.
The processing and service areas also needed to be approved by the local health district. Ice cream produced from a pasteurized mix is permitted much the same way as a restaurant is permitted and inspected. Since the shop would be bringing finished mix from Mountain Dairy’s milk plant there would not be a need for this site to be inspected by the USDA and FDA like the milk plant was.
Construction and landscaping also had to be undertaken and the barn’s exterior and interior needed to be painted. Work on these projects occurred over the summer. With members of the committee checking in frequently to ensure all was going according to plan.
Perhaps most importantly, the family also needed to make ice cream. Various family members had done research on the process. They purchased a recipe book online from the same company the batch freezer had come from which ensured the recipes were in keeping with the scale of the equipment that had been purchased. They also took advantage of the opportunity to visit the Shared Use Dairy Facility at SUNY Cobleskill and they visited another dairy farm who made ice cream and purchased in extra cream from Mountain Dairy.
However, in order to expedite the process the committee identified a consultant in the area who happened to have ample experience formulating ice cream mix and making finished ice cream. Dr. Dave Dzurec had been friendly with various members of the Stearns family for years. He came from a family that operated a dairy processing business much as the Stearns family did. He had worked there for much of his career and pursued a PhD. in dairy food science as a way of being able to contribute to his family’s business. After his wife got a job as a faculty member at the University of Connecticut Dr. Dzurec got a job managing the UConn dairy processing plant and Dairy Bar. At the time the Stearns family got in contact with him Dr. Dzurec was serving as a lecturer at close by Eastern Connecticut State University, in the department of nutrition. Dr. Dzurec stepped in to train the front of house manager, plant manager, and apprentice ice cream maker on making ice cream on the 24qt batch freezer that the family had purchased to start their operation.
This process was tricky because the family wanted to be ready to start making ice cream virtually as soon as all of the equipment was installed and the construction was completed. The virtual tutorials that are included in this course were the first round of training that Mountain Dairy’s ice cream staff received and continue to receive as new hires are made. In the second stage Dr. Dzurec brought a small one-gallon batch freezer to make ice cream test batches. The team used a mixture of sweetened condensed milk and whole milk to approximate the mix that they would be using once they were ready to make saleable ice cream. To ensure the flavors for their recipes were on target they made small batches and made detailed records of what they tweaked in perfecting the recipe. Once the batch freezer was installed, the team went right to work freezing ice cream for sale.
Getting Ready for Opening Day
With opening day closing in the team made their final preparations. To maintain community support and to say thank you to the staff who had worked hard to make it possible for the shop to open while key personnel were busy with preparations, two events were planned. First there would be a “friends and family day” where workers would get a first look at the finished ice cream business and get the chance to taste the ice cream for free. The following day the team planned a private ribbon cutting for various community members that had played a key role in approving and enabling the business to open. To promote these events the team created some simple flyers:
The interior of the shop also needed to be decorated. A local artist was commissioned to paint a large ice cream cone that was hung in the seating area of the shop and a family member used an image generator to make real photographs from around the farm look like they were painted in watercolor. These images were then each subtitled with one of the steps in the process of making Mountain Dairy Creamery’s ice cream from “Cow to Cone.”
Check back frequently for more real-life ice cream experiences as Mountain Dairy Creamery matures as a business!