{"id":6823,"date":"2026-09-10T03:00:37","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T03:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/who-will-make-the-cheese-when-the-cheesemaker-is-gone\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T03:00:37","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T03:00:37","slug":"who-will-make-the-cheese-when-the-cheesemaker-is-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/who-will-make-the-cheese-when-the-cheesemaker-is-gone\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Will Make the Cheese When the Cheesemaker Is Gone?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For America\u2019s small artisan cheesemakers, figuring out how to survive is hard enough. Increasingly, another question looms: What happens to the cheese, the farm, and a lifetime of knowledge when it\u2019s time to stop?<\/em><\/p>\n

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Keith Adams at his former creamery<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Keith Adams closed Alemar Cheese Company and William Cofield Cheesemakers after two decades of making award-winning artisan cheese, he didn\u2019t simply walk away from a job.<\/p>\n

There were recipes. Cultures. Equipment. Relationships with farmers, retailers and distributors. There was a beautiful creamery in Sebastopol, California, purpose-built for making and aging cheese. There were cheeses customers had sought out for years. And there was the enormous, mostly invisible accumulation of knowledge that comes from spending thousands of days coaxing milk into something delicious.<\/p>\n

Then there was Adams himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a grieving process,\u201d he told me several months after closing. For the moment, he\u2019s deliberately resisting making grand plans for what comes next. \u201cIt feels too raw and fresh right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adams\u2019 story, which he told candidly in a recent Cheese Professor essay,<\/a> struck a nerve because it illuminated just how precarious American artisan cheesemaking has become. Rising costs, challenging distribution, consolidation and consumers\u2019 resistance to the true price of handmade cheese have left many small producers struggling. Leslie Cooperband recently reported<\/a> in Cheese Professor that farmstead cheese production declined 10 percent from 2015 to 2021, while the number of raw-milk cheesemakers dropped nearly 20 percent in less than four years.<\/p>\n

But Adams\u2019 departure raises another question, one that will become increasingly urgent as a generation of pioneering American cheesemakers approaches retirement: What happens when the cheesemaker is ready\u2014or forced\u2014to stop?<\/p>\n

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The Impossible Math of Succession<\/h2>\n

Succession is complicated for any small business. With artisan cheese, the hurdles are unusually high.<\/p>\n

A prospective successor doesn\u2019t just need money. They need cheesemaking expertise, access to quality milk, equipment, a compliant production facility, distribution relationships and a tolerance for enormous amounts of physical and financial risk.<\/p>\n

And, according to Adams, they need something less quantifiable. \u201cThe key to the whole thing is this obsession with doing it,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you are not obsessed with doing it, you shouldn\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adams knows something about that obsession. Before cheese, he owned and operated bagel shops. When he founded Alemar in Minnesota in 2009, he raised about $150,000 and sought out three things: great milk, a great mentor and a great teacher. Cowgirl Creamery<\/a> co-founder Sue Conley became a mentor and connected him with cheesemaker Margaret Morris, who helped him learn the craft.<\/p>\n

Today, Adams believes the financial barrier is significantly higher. Even a business with acclaimed cheeses and loyal customers may not be an attractive acquisition if the financial situation tells a different story. \u201cIf I showed a P&L to somebody, they would have run away,\u201d Adams says of his own companies.<\/p>\n

He did imagine succession within his family. One of his two daughters, Alexandra, joined Alemar during the pandemic, but the relentless stress of running the business followed her home each night. Eventually, father and daughter agreed it wasn\u2019t the life she wanted.<\/p>\n

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Omer Seltzer of Mt. Eitan Cheese<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Adams also explored having another cheesemaker produce Alemar\u2019s cheeses. That didn\u2019t come together either. Still, one part of his cheesemaking legacy found an unexpectedly hopeful next chapter. Cheesemaker Omer Seltzer of Mt. Eitan Cheese<\/a> is taking over the former William Cofield production space in Sebastopol.<\/p>\n

For Adams, knowing that the facility will keep making cheese matters enormously. \u201cIt was literally a dream come true,\u201d he says. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to see it go to waste.\u201d<\/p>\n

That may be what succession increasingly looks like in American artisan cheese\u2014not necessarily one tidy handoff of a company from founder to successor, but pieces of a cheesemaking life finding new homes.<\/p>\n

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A Different Model of Letting Go<\/h2>\n
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Jennifer Bice of Redwood Hill<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jennifer Lynn Bice, founder of Redwood Hill Farm & Creamery,<\/a> offers another model.<\/p>\n

Bice began thinking seriously about retirement as she approached 65, after 38 years in business. By then, Redwood Hill had grown from a small local operation selling primarily to health and natural food stores into a company with nationwide distribution and 90 employees.<\/p>\n

Unlike many founders, though, Bice had inadvertently been preparing for succession for years. In the early 2000s, she built a modern creamery away from the farm where she lived and raised goats. That separation ultimately gave her options: She could sell the creamery while keeping the farm she loved.<\/p>\n

Other decidedly unromantic choices proved just as essential: excellent bookkeeping, documented operating procedures, employee manuals and, crucially, profitability. \u201cSuccession planning for me meant the sale of the business, as I had no heirs to take over or employees that would have been able to purchase or operate [the] business,\u201d Bice says.<\/p>\n

When she sold the creamery in 2016, her priorities extended well beyond receiving a check. She wanted Redwood Hill\u2019s goat milk products to remain available to customers and for longtime employees to keep their jobs and benefits.<\/p>\n

The process was lengthy and emotional. Bice hired a business consultant and worked with her accountant and attorney. Selling a business that represented decades of her life also required a less tangible skill.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce sold, you must let go,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

But letting go hasn\u2019t meant leaving cheese behind. Bice kept Redwood Hill Farm, although she has downsized her goat herd. Today the farm sells its milk to Mt. Eitan\u2014the same artisan cheesemaker taking over Adams\u2019 former production facility. \u201cI have immense pride that our goat milk is used in making their incredible cheeses,\u201d Bice says. \u201cI just don\u2019t have to do it!\u201d<\/p>\n

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What Might Come Next for American Cheese<\/h2>\n
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Leslie Cooperband and Wes Jarrell with kids at their former farm<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s a small circle, and perhaps a glimpse of what could help preserve American artisan cheese: farms, facilities, skills and relationships passing between people rather than disappearing altogether.<\/p>\n

Cooperband has proposed taking that idea even further, arguing for regional cooperatives that could allow independent makers and mongers to share costs, infrastructure, expertise and marketing rather than each struggling alone.<\/p>\n

Because the loss of a cheesemaker is bigger than the disappearance of one wedge from the cheese case. Small cheesemakers preserve knowledge about milk and microbes, animals and land, aging rooms and regional foodways. When their businesses disappear without successors, some of that knowledge can disappear with them.<\/p>\n

Bice believes cheesemakers should start preparing long before they intend to retire: a plan for next year, a five-year plan and an eventual exit strategy, adjusted as circumstances change.<\/p>\n

Adams, meanwhile, isn\u2019t ready to decide what will happen to his brands or whether some of his best-known cheeses might someday be made again. A few cheesemakers have already expressed interest.<\/p>\n

For now, that possibility is enough. \u201cThe crux of this for me,\u201d Adams says, \u201cis seeing the people that are still producing cheese succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps that is succession, too: not simply preserving one company exactly as it was, but making sure the cheesemaking continues.<\/p>\n

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Read more:<\/h2>\n

Why I Left Cheesemaking After 20 Years<\/a>
How to Save American Artisan Cheese<\/a>
What Makes Vella Cheese So Special<\/a>
Why Academics Turned to Goat Farming at Prairie Fruits Farm & Creamery<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For America\u2019s small artisan cheesemakers, figuring out how to survive is hard enough. Increasingly, another question looms: What happens to the cheese, the farm, and a lifetime of knowledge when it\u2019s time to stop? Keith Adams at his former creamery When Keith Adams closed Alemar Cheese Company and William Cofield Cheesemakers after two decades of … Okumaya devam et “Who Will Make the Cheese When the Cheesemaker Is Gone?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[395],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-milk-and-diary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6823\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}