Ohio Farm Steps Up Bottling in Pandemic Demand By Ann Hinch
DE GRAFF, Ohio - Taking the plunge into his own creamery was not the first time Ray Jackson gambled with his income. Being a dairy farmer all his life had familiarized him with plenty of risk. In February 2019, he and his wife, Colleen, launched Indian Creek Creamery on their 180acre De Graff farm, bottling part of their Holstein production one day a week for sale in half-gallon jugs they delivered to Columbus and Cincinnati for small retail stores. They judged they would need to reach selling 1,500 jugs a week to break even. Ray immersed himself in the new business, resigning from his job as a district sales manager for ABS Global to milk, bottle, market and deliver alongside a fulltime farm employee, a couple seasonal workers and Colleen, when she could take time away from the farm’s bookkeeping and home-schooling. After a year’s work, they were moving only 1,000 jugs each week. So, they decided to give it another three months – if they couldn’t reach 1,500, he would find another job and sell the tanks and equipment he’d spent years collecting, perhaps even their 25-year-old farm and livestock. A month later, the 2020-defining COVID-19 started spreading more rapidly in the U.S. and triggered lockdowns – and attendant supply shortages. 8
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While making his delivery one week that March to stores, Ray was greeted like a war hero returning home, bringing in jugs of milk to stock suddenly-empty coolers. Spotting an opportunity, he called Colleen and informed her: “We’re going to bottle more tonight.” The next week, he sold 2,200 jugs instead of 1,000; the following week, they fell back to just under 1,600, but steadily climbed back to approximately 2,000 a month after that. Where the traditional milk supply chain fell short, the Jacksons were busily hammering in more of their own links. “I felt like a celebrity walking into a store” with deliveries, Ray recalled. On a recent sunny Saturday morning,
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he reported bottling 2,700 half-gallons the previous week, saying volume does bob a bit depending on the week and season. For instance, fall/winter holidays demand drops because people don’t stock up on milk while out of town. He still supplies retail grocery, but that’s only about 25-30 percent of his volume; he sells a similar amount through Market Wagon, an Indianapolis-based home-delivery service that branched into nearby Columbus around the time store shortages began, and “just blew up.” The rest are jugs and 2.5-gallon bagged milk sold to coffee shops and restaurants for food prep. “The pandemic made us,” Ray said, explaining the ramp-up in sales in the past 21 months has allowed Indian Creek Creamery to learn to bottle more, and faster. SLOW GROWTH The employees – which now includes an extra full-timer – fill jugs on Mondays using up to three days of stored milk production, as limited by Ohio Department of Agriculture regulations for freshness. Soon they will also bottle on Wednesdays, and Ray just installed another 1,000-gallon tank to mix flavored milk, using a custom chocolate blend Colleen and her brother chose from a Cleveland supplier – he was planning to begin with 300 jugs weekly and
