It’s been over a month since the indiegogo grand finale.\u00a0 It feels like it was six months ago.\u00a0 I swear that days are entire lifetimes.\u00a0 I have been saying that for about a year now.\u00a0 And each day ends with me not getting everything done on my To Do list.\u00a0 I have to smile at that.<\/p>\n
Happy Easter.\u00a0 Last year on Easter day, I set out in my rental van with my best dog, Moscow, from Portland, Oregon.\u00a0 I didn’t have a car, a place to call my own, or really much of anything.\u00a0 I set my sights on River Falls with the intentions of starting a coffee shop.\u00a0 It really seems miraculous to be where I am at right now.\u00a0 Truly.\u00a0 That is what I have been humbled with this week.<\/p>\n
I have lots to tell you.\u00a0 I really do.\u00a0 Things have been happening and adventures have been had.\u00a0 But for today, I want to leave you with an essay that I wrote for the American Cheese Society.\u00a0 Their annual conference is in Raleigh, North Carolina and I applied for a scholarship.\u00a0 That just seems like a good place to start.\u00a0 We’ll continue to get reacquainted in the coming days, I assure you.\u00a0 Welcome back.\u00a0 WeatherVane never left.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We watched movies on cheesemaking and sampled all of the varieties of cheese to prepare for the competition.\u00a0 Without a dairy farming background, I placed 8th at the state competition.\u00a0 During that time I first got my hands dirty vegetable farming.\u00a0 In college at the University of Wisconsin- River Falls, I took Food Science 101 as a part of obtaining my degree in Horticulture.\u00a0 When most people think about Horticulture, they think about the ornamental side.\u00a0 My passion has always been the edible side:\u00a0 fruits and vegetables and the humanity behind our food chain.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n Over the following years, I continued working with local farmers (albeit vegetable) in my roles in the produce industry.\u00a0 In my last position, I was in food service sales in the Portland, Oregon metro area.\u00a0 The grocery buyer and I always had a healthy debate about whether Oregon\u2019s Tillamook Cheddar was better than Wisconsin\u2019s.\u00a0 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 \u201cutilitarian\u201d cheeses as a major component to my caf\u00e9 and retail store concept.\u00a0 I was shopping at my local grocery chain store in River Falls, Wisconsin looking for some \u201cgood\u201d cheddar.\u00a0 You know what I found?\u00a0 Tillamook Cheddar.\u00a0 Then, the following week I needed some gruyere for a recipe.\u00a0 I had to ask a friend who worked 45 minutes away in Minneapolis to bring some to me because I couldn\u2019t find that either.\u00a0 My next stop was the James J. Hill Reference Library in St. Paul, Minnesota.\u00a0 It was there that I discovered the facts behind the current specialty cheese trend.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It felt serendipitous.\u00a0 Not to mention that it has a nice shelf life and that I would once again be able to work with farmers.<\/em><\/p>\n WeatherVane Creamery is a \u201cWisconsin Only\u201d specialty retail shop and caf\u00e9 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.\u00a0 Part of WeatherVane Creamery\u2019s mission is to provide the community with a local business that is smart, quirky, accessible, and magical. It will be an \u201ciconic Wisconsin destination store that successfully combines and appeals to traditional sensibilities with a hip and modern feel.\u201d\u00a0 It is not your grandmother\u2019s cheese shop. \u00a0<\/em> The question \u201cWhat do you most enjoy most about your position?\u201d can be answered by four simple statements:\u00a0 A business plan.\u00a0 A dream.\u00a0 A commitment to my community.\u00a0 A difference to be made. \u00a0<\/em> In February, WeatherVane Creamery launched an online crowdsourcing campaign to raise $100,000 to cover 50% of the opening expenses.\u00a0 We raised roughly $6,000.\u00a0 Since the campaign, we have been pursuing investors.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 He, in turn, connected us with the CEO and President of the Opportunity Finance Network.\u00a0 With the help of OFN, other organizations, banks, and interested investors, we will open in the summer of 2012.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 An analogy is when I was a Produce Manager and I accidentally dropped a case of organic Chilean blueberries.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 To me, it was a tragedy.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 This is going to be the key to success for WeatherVane Creamery.\u00a0 As the leader of the business, I need to bring that knowledge and understanding to each product.\u00a0 Since cheese and grilled cheese are our primary products, this is imperative.\u00a0 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.<\/em> I am the best candidate for the scholarship because WeatherVane Creamery is all about making big moves that people watch.\u00a0 We forward the Wisconsin specialty cheese market within our own borders, as a travel destination, and online.\u00a0 The time is now for the cheese shop to be redefined for new generations (and old) and we are doing it.\u00a0 We have local and national media coverage.\u00a0 People (like Howard Schultz) are paying attention to what is happening.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We are making a difference in the community of River Falls, the state of Wisconsin, and beyond. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s been over a month since the indiegogo grand finale.\u00a0 It feels like it was six months ago.\u00a0 I swear that days are entire lifetimes.\u00a0 I have been saying that for about a year now.\u00a0 And each day ends with … Continue reading
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