After a Rocky Start to the Pandemic, Wisconsin Cheesemakers Survive and Thrive

In partnership with: Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.

Like a lot of agricultural sectors, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic sent shockwaves through the cheesemaking community. Overnight, its largest markets, like restaurants and schools, were shut down. With a surplus of product and low demand, prices tumbled. The benchmark price for mild cheddar, for example, dropped to its lowest level in decades. Luckily, the story doesn’t end there – thanks to the nimble response from the state’s cheesemakers.

“The extraordinary story in this time of economic distress was the innovations we saw among cheesemakers and other dairy manufacturers as they quickly pivoted to serve new markets,” says John Umhoefer, executive director of the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association, a nonprofit trade association. “In a difficult year, food production not only survived, it even thrived.”

Customer Service Any Way You Slice It

One of those success stories comes from Andy Hatch, owner of Uplands Cheese, which is based in Dodgeville. At first, things looked bleak for the small family-run dairy farm and cheese business. As the restaurants and specialty shops he usually sold to went dark, “we lost about a third of our sales overnight,” Hatch says. But then, he noticed something amazing: Customers began to seek him out on the internet instead.

“When our phone stopped ringing, our website started pinging,” he says. “Regular customers who missed our cheese realized they could buy it directly from us. It was a great way to keep cash coming in and to keep our employees busy.”

Uplands sells just two types of cheese, Pleasant Ridge Reserve and Rush Creek Reserve, and usually sells around 150,000 pounds of product annually. As the pandemic continued, thousands of website orders began streaming in, forcing the company to pivot from large wholesale orders to smaller requests directly from customers. That created new logistical challenges for the Uplands team.

“Systems that were functional with several dozen orders a week, like creating shipping labels by hand, broke down when we needed to process several hundred orders per week,” he says.

Throughout the summer, Hatch focused on gaining efficiency in every part of the operation, including managing customer communications, data, packaging, materials and labor. With leaner, more efficient and scalable systems in place, Uplands was ready to handle record-breaking holiday sales in the fourth quarter. “Our 2020 website sales were almost triple what they had been the year before,” he says. The trend has continued into this year. “We’re now processing five times as many website orders as wholesale orders.”

See more: 9 Cheese Experiences You Need to Have in Wisconsin

Cheesemakers Look Ahead

Hatch is confident that Uplands will continue to meet customers where they are, especially in light of predictions suggesting that online purchasing will remain strong in a post-pandemic reality.

“We’ve created a business plan to include growth in online sales, and we’re hoping to receive grant funding that will help us implement that strategy,” he says.

Hatch isn’t alone in adapting to a new kind of future, Umhoefer says.

“It was an unforgettable experience to see the industry remake itself as markets fell, then rose,” he recalls. “Workers quickly adopted ways to stay safe. Customers living in quarantine made it clear that dairy was essential in their diets, and our cheesemakers delivered. Now, cheesemakers in Wisconsin are gearing up to address multiple post-pandemic trends in grocery stores, schools and restaurants. We’re still ready to deliver what people are hungry for.”

See more: Wisconsin Cheeses Are Making Quite a Stir in International Markets