THE PRODUCT THAT MUST KEEP CURDLING With a desire to protect employees and as sales were down, Bongards continued processing milk. The start of the coronavirus pandemic carried a “tremendous decrease in sales” with a 50% decrease from the end of March to the beginning of May, Bongards Creameries President and CEO Daryl Larson shares. The hit followed a recent 10% increase. By the end of 2020, a small decline in sales compared to 2019 still existed in the value added cheese products, which largely serve restaurants and schools. The sales decline is the first in over a decade, according to Larson and Director of Marketing Evan Carlson. The company has otherwise seen doubledigit sales growth for the past five years.
Joe Nelson works on the block packaging line at Bongards. Submitted Photo
As restaurants and schools had to move to new models, the cheese sales weren’t there. Larson says, "It really was pretty devastating to our mostly food service and K-12 business.”
Bongards also sells products in the areas of food processing, convenience stores, delis, and internationally. While experiencing a decrease in revenue, Bongards found itself, along with industry after industry, stretched with high costs for personal protective equipment. At the plants, additional locker and break rooms, masks and thermometers emerged as needs for the safety of employees. “It’s necessary in order to fight the pandemic and keep our employees and their families healthy and safe,” Larson says, “but there’s tremendous cost involved.” The cleaning of the plant and the milk tankers coming in daily was no new change, though. Larson says, “Dairy plants inherently are … clean and sanitary, they’re cleaned up very, very frequently, in some cases every day, but we redoubled our efforts there with cleaning and sanitizing” in the common areas. Stacks of ways to protect employees rolled out day after day in March.
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