It’s Been Awhile

It’s been over a month since the indiegogo grand finale.  It feels like it was six months ago.  I swear that days are entire lifetimes.  I have been saying that for about a year now.  And each day ends with me not getting everything done on my To Do list.  I have to smile at that.

Happy Easter.  Last year on Easter day, I set out in my rental van with my best dog, Moscow, from Portland, Oregon.  I didn’t have a car, a place to call my own, or really much of anything.  I set my sights on River Falls with the intentions of starting a coffee shop.  It really seems miraculous to be where I am at right now.  Truly.  That is what I have been humbled with this week.

I have lots to tell you.  I really do.  Things have been happening and adventures have been had.  But for today, I want to leave you with an essay that I wrote for the American Cheese Society.  Their annual conference is in Raleigh, North Carolina and I applied for a scholarship.  That just seems like a good place to start.  We’ll continue to get reacquainted in the coming days, I assure you.  Welcome back.  WeatherVane never left.  We just have been hunkering down and fighting the good fight.

Aside from being a cheesehead at heart, having grown up on a steady diet of 2% milk and cheese curds (ok, ok and maybe some other things in there as well), my first formal introduction to the industry was in 1994 when I joined the Dairy Judging Team in my local, urban FFA chapter in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.  We watched movies on cheesemaking and sampled all of the varieties of cheese to prepare for the competition.  Without a dairy farming background, I placed 8th at the state competition.  During that time I first got my hands dirty vegetable farming.  In college at the University of Wisconsin- River Falls, I took Food Science 101 as a part of obtaining my degree in Horticulture.  When most people think about Horticulture, they think about the ornamental side.  My passion has always been the edible side:  fruits and vegetables and the humanity behind our food chain.  In 1997-2001 I oversaw the dairy buying in my General Manager position at the local food cooperative and made sure that we offered the best artisan cheeses. 

Over the following years, I continued working with local farmers (albeit vegetable) in my roles in the produce industry.  In my last position, I was in food service sales in the Portland, Oregon metro area.  The grocery buyer and I always had a healthy debate about whether Oregon’s Tillamook Cheddar was better than Wisconsin’s.  Once I moved back to Wisconsin and was working on my business plan, this friendly debate is what ended up fueling me in adding specialty and “utilitarian” cheeses as a major component to my café and retail store concept.  I was shopping at my local grocery chain store in River Falls, Wisconsin looking for some “good” cheddar.  You know what I found?  Tillamook Cheddar.  Then, the following week I needed some gruyere for a recipe.  I had to ask a friend who worked 45 minutes away in Minneapolis to bring some to me because I couldn’t find that either.  My next stop was the James J. Hill Reference Library in St. Paul, Minnesota.  It was there that I discovered the facts behind the current specialty cheese trend.  I found that the demographics for those cheese eaters exactly matched the demographics of the town that I set my sights on opening my business, River Falls.  It felt serendipitous.  Not to mention that it has a nice shelf life and that I would once again be able to work with farmers.

WeatherVane Creamery is a “Wisconsin Only” specialty retail shop and café featuring wrapped farmstead, artisan and specialty cheeses, organic, small batch churned scooped ice cream, malts and floats, soup, gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches, carefully selected frozen meats, Wisconsin kitsch items, exclusive locally roasted coffee beans, other edibles such as maple syrup and honey, and the customer experience of the pour over coffee and tea method.  Part of WeatherVane Creamery’s mission is to provide the community with a local business that is smart, quirky, accessible, and magical. It will be an “iconic Wisconsin destination store that successfully combines and appeals to traditional sensibilities with a hip and modern feel.”  It is not your grandmother’s cheese shop.  

The question “What do you most enjoy most about your position?” can be answered by four simple statements:  A business plan.  A dream.  A commitment to my community.  A difference to be made.  

In February, WeatherVane Creamery launched an online crowdsourcing campaign to raise $100,000 to cover 50% of the opening expenses.  We raised roughly $6,000.  Since the campaign, we have been pursuing investors.  On Wednesday, March 21, 2012 I flew out to the Starbucks Annual Shareholder Meeting in Seattle, Washington and invited the ceo, Howard Schultz, to become an investor and mentor for WeatherVane Creamery.  He, in turn, connected us with the CEO and President of the Opportunity Finance Network.  With the help of OFN, other organizations, banks, and interested investors, we will open in the summer of 2012.    

What I expect to gain from attending the American Cheese Society 29th Annual Conference & Competition is a greater understanding and appreciation for the specialty cheesemaking craft and lifestyle.  While I have done a lot of eating, reading, and speaking with people in the industry in my life and especially in this past year, I still do not have a full picture of what it takes to produce a pound of artisan cheese.  An analogy is when I was a Produce Manager and I accidentally dropped a case of organic Chilean blueberries.  Having farmed myself, I had the full appreciation for what it took for each individual berry to grow to maturity, be harvested at the right time, to pass international organic inspections, and be shipped to Portland only to be dropped on the floor by me.  To me, it was a tragedy.  And even though I never personally grew blueberries, I was able to convey to my staff and customers what it took that made them special and precious.  This is going to be the key to success for WeatherVane Creamery.  As the leader of the business, I need to bring that knowledge and understanding to each product.  Since cheese and grilled cheese are our primary products, this is imperative.  Aside from that, it is also an amazing opportunity to be on the cutting edge of innovations in the industry and to network with fellow trades people.

I am the best candidate for the scholarship because WeatherVane Creamery is all about making big moves that people watch.  We forward the Wisconsin specialty cheese market within our own borders, as a travel destination, and online.  The time is now for the cheese shop to be redefined for new generations (and old) and we are doing it.  We have local and national media coverage.  People (like Howard Schultz) are paying attention to what is happening.  We have a deep commitment to honoring the hard work and passion that goes into producing a quality, local product and having pride in celebrating our regional treasures with the world.  We are making a difference in the community of River Falls, the state of Wisconsin, and beyond.