Say Cheese | Mark Whitney says New Englanders love the stuff, and his operation at Pineland Farms wants to produce 300,000 pounds a year to satiate them
Three days a week, Mark Whitney gets up early to make cheese at the Creamery at Pineland Farms in New Gloucester. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, Whitney starts at 5:30 a.m. with 13,000 pounds of fresh milk from the farm's Holstein cows. By 5:00 that evening, he's transformed it into roughly 1,300 pounds of freshly made cheese, which is moved to an aging area to sit for three months to several years, depending on the type of cheese. "I find it satisfying to bring in one product that's the liquid milk," says Whitney, "and by the end of the day you've created a block of cheese."
Whitney is the head cheese maker and manager of the Creamery, a 13,000-square-foot, high-tech facility opened at Pineland Farms in June. Along with Peter Dockendorf, the assistant cheese maker, and the Creamery's boiler operator, John Hersey, Whitney has spent the past four months curding, cutting, pressing and aging 4,000 pounds of cheese a week — cheddar and Monterey Jack, to start. Thanks to the aging required, though, that cheese is only now hitting the market. "The biggest question I get is 'Where's the cheese?'" says Whitney.
Yet the Creamery's executives already are looking far ahead. With the current size of the farm's Holstein herd, Pineland Farms Executive Director Todd Jepson estimates the Creamery could produce about 300,000 pounds of cheese a year, making it the largest cheese producer in Maine. Because the Creamery's processing capacity can handle more milk than Pineland Farms' cows can produce, the long-term goal is for the Creamery to produce 1.5 million pounds of cheese a year.
While that sounds like a lot of cheese, it's a small chunk compared to what's consumed in the United States. Americans consumed about 30 pounds of cheese per person in 2001, according to a 2003 USDA report by Judy Putnam and Jane Allshouse. Whitney believes that number is higher in New England, which he says has one of the highest per-capita rates of cheese consumption in the country. "Right now with 1.3 million people," says Whitney, "Maine imports around 40 million pounds of cheese a year to satisfy demand."
Creating a local source to match that appetite wasn't Pineland Farms' only goal in starting the Creamery, however. Pineland Farms is a nonprofit with a diverse business model that includes a working farm, an equestrian center, guest facilities and a business park. To keep those operations running, in 2006 Pineland Farms received $2.9 million in grants from the Libra Foundation. By bringing a creamery under the farm's nonprofit umbrella, Jepson is hoping to develop Pineland Farms Inc. into a self-sustaining institution. "Our early analysis indicated that it will be much more profitable to sell our milk as cheese rather than as milk — particularly given the low price of milk right now," says Jepson. "Our goal as a nonprofit organization is that this cheese will add revenue to our bottom line and help us become less reliant on outside sources for funding."
But like any food production business, Pineland Farms had to explore several factors to determine just how to approach the market to give its venture the best shot at sustainability. There was the question of whether to go the artisanal route and sell small quantities of high-priced cheese in gourmet shops, or look for economies of scale that allow the venture to sell lots of cheese through larger retail stores. There also were questions about pricing and distribution.
To help with these issues, the Creamery signed Sudbury, Massachusetts-based Price Sloane Specialty Marketing Inc. as a broker, which is working to both place the cheese in grocery chains like Shaw's and Hannaford and also to help determine the right price for its cheese. "Each cheese will demand its own per pound price," says Jepson. "We're looking to get the most the market will bear for our cheeses knowing that they will be more of a premium cheese versus a commodity cheese."
Given the scale of the operation, this new player in Maine's cheese industry understandably has caught the attention of cheese makers and cheese mongers around the state. While many express overall support for the endeavor, some retailers are questioning its approach.
Farmstead for the masses
Pineland Farms had been considering a cheese making operation for several years, says Jepson, but the plans accelerated when the nonprofit hired Whitney in 2004 to be the head cheese maker and help develop the facility. Whitney, who has made cheese for 10 years, previously worked for a creamery at a New Hampshire dairy farm, where he made a Monterey Jack.
Once on board, Whitney played an essential role in designing his future workspace. "When we hired him the first thing we did was send him on a trip to Wisconsin to look at some larger cheese making operations," says Jepson. "He came back with the layout of the floor plan and the flow of the process for our existing creamery."
It took an additional year to build the facility on Pineland Farms' 5,000-acre campus, but by June of this year, the Creamery was making its first batches of cheese. Sticking with Pineland Farms' nonprofit mission, though, the Creamery also features a public viewing corridor that allows tours to watch the entire process. "We try to maintain as open of a facility as possible while still running a business out of it," says Whitney.
Now, though, Whitney's Monterey Jack is ready to hit the marketplace, and the company is working to define what sets Pineland Farms cheese apart from its competitors. While the Creamery currently sells the cheese at the Pineland visitors center, the strategy is to offer a locally grown and produced premium product through major retail stores.
Helping justify a premium designation is the "farmstead" aspect of the cheese. Although farmstead isn't a certifiable label like organic, it is an industry term that indicates the milk used to make the cheese came from the same farm on which the creamery is located. Farmstead cheese is becoming popular among consumers, Whitney says, particularly in conjunction with the resurgence of buy-local campaigns.
But reaction to the arrival of a new, big cheese maker has been mixed within Maine's cheese industry. Kris Horton, proprietor of K. Horton Specialty Foods in Portland, questions the Creamery's mass-market direction. "What's becoming big in the U.S. is high-quality, artisanal cheeses," says Horton. "But what Pineland Farms seems to be producing is high production generic cheeses."
She adds, though, that no one in Maine currently is producing a good quality cheddar that's been aged for at least two years. It's a product the Creamery currently is aging, and Horton says she is interested in checking out the result.
On the other end of the spectrum, some cheese makers see the Creamery filling an industry need for more quality cheese from Maine. Jennifer Benecourt, president of the Maine Cheese Guild and head cheese maker for the Silvery Moon Creamery at Smiling Hill Farms in Westbrook, says there's more than enough room in the market to accommodate the Creamery. "The main problem we have in the guild is that Maine cheeses are getting on map," says Benecourt. "Even though there are more than 23 licensed cheese makers in the state, we don't have enough cheese."
The Maine Cheese Guild is taking several steps to remedy the situation, including offering classes and general cheese making education to encourage interest and involvement. But she sees the Creamery's potential size as a means to meet demand while raising the profile of the entire industry. "Pineland Farms will probably garner quite a lot of press and excitement," says Benecourt. "I think that's really going to help anyone involved with Maine cheese"
Despite that excitement, Whitney doesn't seem to be thinking too much about the Creamery's long-term impact on the Maine cheese industry — he has no time to take a break from cheese making. His schedule still requires him to be on site by 5:30 a.m. three days a week, producing two different varieties of cheese each day. "Right now we're trying to build an inventory of our Monterey Jack and our cheddar," says Whitney, noting that he doesn't anticipate a break anytime soon. "Later on I plan on starting a baby Swiss."
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