Case studies in how retiring dairy pioneers keep their cheese legacy alive
Early pioneers in the American cheese industry—which exploded between the 1980s and 1990s—are reaching retirement age. As with many small businesses, it’s not nearly as simple as just passing it along to the next generation.
With or without farms attached, cheese businesses facing an oncoming transfer of ownership have myriad challenges: a next generation that can’t afford to buy out the current one to help enable their retirement, or offspring who haven’t been trained in the business but don’t want to see their family property let go. Others may not have heirs or someone inclined to take over, but selling a creamery and farm to a third-party buyer isn’t exactly like selling a small business on Main Street.
For many cheese operators, there is a real concern about what comes next, which was displayed during an illuminating session at the 2024 American Cheese Society Conference. Pete Messmer of Lively Run Goat Dairy, Katie Phillips of Dairy Connection, and Andy Hatch of Uplands Cheese spoke candidly on the topic of succession, moderated by Kelly Cousineau, founder of Owners Outpost, an organization that consults on succession planning. On the final morning of the conference, the session was more hushed than quiet; a small, obviously concerned crowd hung on every word of wisdom imparted by those who had recent experience in a thoughtfully orchestrated leadership change.
The Now Generation and the Next Generation
Small businesses and family businesses—many of America’s cheesemakers identify as both—pose unique challenges when it comes to passing the torch. “Family is often harder than third-party because the financial transaction is usually muddied,” says Cousineau. “In small businesses, owners are often ‘owner-operators’ and therefore perform many roles.”
Messmer and Phillips worked with consultants in order to help facilitate both the financial and leadership pieces of their respective transitions.
For Messmer, the leadership element of the transition at Lively Run Goat Dairy isn’t without challenges, “but it very much feels like we’re aiming at the same goal,” he says. “We often argue about how to get there, but there’s no disagreement about where we’re trying to get.” As he moved from head cheesemaker to a broader operations role, “the biggest realization was that the business was not large enough to finance the transition, and that we needed to grow,” he says, in order to actually enable his parents’ retirement.
Phillips also had to manage a similar realization at Dairy Connection, a business begun in 1999 by her father, Dave Potter, that supplies cultures to artisan cheesemakers. “We’re working on how my dad can get his money out of the business but also not put me massively in debt,” she says.
A big motivator for both generations has been establishing sales targets and working out the details of hitting them. Messmer is currently a 12.5 percent owner of Lively Run. His eventual ownership involves a deal that is effectively a loan, “and then a note that my parents will hold that I will pay out over time. With them being my actual parents, it will probably be a little bit more financially advantageous to me,” he says, than it would for a third-party buyer.
As of April 2025, Phillips is now the CEO of Dairy Connection. The financial transition is a gradual one, but she also delineated some of the logistical and emotional challenges of taking over a parent’s legacy. The last few years of her father’s tenure were governed by a guiding motto: “I’m not retired, but I’m not required.” This didn’t come without foibles, such as realizing that the company’s accounting framework lived on her father’s personal computer—which occasionally traveled with him—rather than on the company’s premises.
“The process has taken over a decade,” she says, “but my dad has the mindset that he wants Dairy Connection to continue on without him actually working in it.”
Working with Cousineau at Owners Outpost allowed Phillips’ father to shift his mindset about the business to being an asset as opposed to his baby. Over time, they empowered other members of the team to build relationships as point people for customers and vendors.
As for navigating the process slowly and with a consultant, “it’s a more effective strategy than people who say that their retirement plan is death,” says Phillips, “which is not very helpful for the next generation to be able to come in and do something.”
Seeking New Ownership
Cheesemakers and farms that have successfully sold to third-party buyers while maintaining the spirit of the business have also demonstrated various models for doing so.
Ray and Pam Robinson of Robinson Farm added cheese to their multi-generation dairy farm prior to their retirement in order to increase salability. “We thought we could make it more marketable with cheese,” says Ray, whose six children with Pam had mostly moved to cities and weren’t interested in taking over the farm. The Robinsons also reduced the acreage connected to the sale of the buildings to make it more affordable and attractive to a potential buyer. “We really, really wanted it to stay a farm,” he says. “That was very important to us.”
In doing so, it became financially feasible for Marlo Stein, who had farming aspirations. “I thought being able to own and operate a farm would be many years from now,” says Stein, who was nonetheless able to buy the Robinsons’ farm, with a partner and help from family, in her mid-20s. Now christened Round Table Farm, Stein makes cheese from recipes taught to her by the Robinsons and grows flowers on the property.
Andy Hatch of Uplands Cheese is also on the other side of a successful third-party transition, having started at Uplands as a cheesemaker and eventually buying the operation with partner herdsman Scott Mericka. When Uplands’ previous owners, Mike Gingrich and Dan Patenaude, were looking to sell, “the bigger cheese companies would show up and not want to run a dairy farm,” says Hatch. “Farmers would come look and have no idea how to run a cheese factory. They couldn’t find somebody to come in and write a big check.”
The deal struck for Hatch and Mericka was similar to what Messmer outlined with his own parents, involving a loan on behalf of the previous owners. “We had no family money, no investors, less than five percent of total equity, and we had to buy it all: land, houses, inventory, and animals,” says Hatch. “It was a complicated deal.” Let it be a testament to the success of Uplands’ two oft-awarded cheeses, Pleasant Ridge Reserve and Rush Creek Reserve, and establishing growth targets that allowed Hatch and Mericka to pay off the 25-year note in about 10 years’ time.
Hatch also attributes a lot of that success to creating an advisory board as a measure for accountability and guidance in the business. “We wanted to have a lot of eyes on our big decisions, and we wanted to enforce a certain amount of self-discipline to report financials and to justify our decision-making.”
Looking Ahead
For those who have managed this transition—gracefully, it must be said—the time to start thinking about the next generation is now.
“I’m not sure how I’ll feel when I’m 70, but at this point, our plan is to position ourselves so we don’t need to receive a big check all at once when we retire,” says Hatch. “We’d like to be able to sell it to employees or children gradually, as Mike and Dan did for us.”
“Taking over the business has shown me that transition is inevitable, but how you approach it makes all the difference,” says Phillips. “Going through this with my dad, I’ve seen the power of a thoughtful transition. Whether it’s passed to family or someone else with the same passion, I want the next chapter to be even better than the last.”
Pamela Vachon
Pamela Vachon is a freelance food and beverage writer and educator based in Astoria, New York, whose work has appeared in Bon Appétit, Wine Enthusiast, and VinePair, among others. Formerly a bartender and captain at New York’s two Michelin star restaurant, The Modern (where her cheese education began as a driver of a tableside cheese trolley), she is also a certified sommelier, and leads cheese, wine, and cocktail tastings through Murray’s Cheese and Night Inn
