Smith's Significantly Expanding Its Product Line, Rebranding
This new building is the future site of bottled non-homogenized milk from Smith's own dairy herd, along with other products mentioned in this story.
Photo by Keith Kent
Rebranding as Smith's!
Smith's Country Cheese, sold in November 2016 to the Catlin family, originally founded by David and Carol Smith, is currently in the process of rebranding its business as it expands its product line to continue the company theme of growing with product diversity.
Photo by Keith Kent
Smith's owners Jake and Allie Catlin, along with co owners Mike and Leah Catlin, who purchased the business and took over operations in November 2016, are now happy to announce they are expanding their line of quality dairy specialty products and want you to know they will soon be selling their own bottled milk and much more!
During the early days of the pandemic, there were many people who didn't feel comfortable going to large heavily populated supermarkets. Smith's began receiving customers who were not just looking for cheese and hamburger, but milk, eggs, butter, and even yogurt, as they were more comfortable shopping in smaller less crowded settings. The Catlins began looking into options to better serve their community and their customers. It would take responsible planning, pricing, cost estimates, and much more to achieve their goal: healthy nutritious food options at a business where people could come see the cows, see the staff processing the milk
and making the products, and know exactly not only where the food came from but just as importantly, what was actually in it.
When the Catlin family verified that the town of Winchendon is technically considered a "food desert" due to its population, size in square miles, lack of a supermarket in town and the distance to supermarkets outside of town, the number of food insecure residents, and other factors, the challenge was on and just like Arthur Conan Doyle said, the game was afoot! The Catlins were off to the grant application races with several primary targets in mind: acquire a grant to assist with a building and machinery, better serve their community through product diversification, and most importantly, better serve Winchendon by bringing healthy food options within its town borders.
Potential assistance included a "Food Security Infrastructure Grant" (FSIG) announced by the Baker/Polito administration on February 16, 2021. In a press release, the administration said, "The final rounds of the grant program include funds critical to investments in technology, equipment, capacity, and other assistance to help local food producers, especially in the distribution of food insecure communities." The announcement went on to quote Environmental Affairs Secretary Kathleen Theoharides as saying, "By announcing these grants at a local Commonwealth farm today, I want to highlight the critical work Massachusetts farmers, fishers and food producers are doing to connect their nutritious products with the residents who need it most, even as these businesses have faced challenges during the pandemic."
In an online summary from The Massachusetts Food System Collaborative, farm producers such as Smith's were heavily under-represented during the grant award process. A quote taken from their documents states, "Producer applicants were significantly under-represented in the final grants, with farms and fisheries receiving just 11% and 18% of the funds they had requested, respectively, while distributors, food banks/pantries, and schools were awarded 31%, 33%, and 32% of the amounts they had applied for, respectively." The document also went on to state that of 599 applying farms, only 121 were funded. At just a 20 percent chance of success, Smith's was in for a battle, and needed all the facts it could muster to win the competitive grant in their professional farming and dairy production field.
The Catlins, after all their due diligence, received the confirmation letter they were truly hoping for and were excited to be notified that against the odds, their business was one of the winners for the coveted FSIG award! With the grant award successfully received, obtaining the physical structures such a building to provide the space needed, and installation of all its necessary supporting equipment, including new dairy machinery, was the next big step.
Jake Catlin said, "This process is always something we have thought about from the beginning. When we took over from the Smiths we knew as they did selling milk at wholesale is a losing effort, so you have to diversify your product. You have to have something special which as they call it is value-added products. The easier thing to do instead of selling your milk to the co-ops is to bottle it and sell it. But what we also noticed there are a lack of dairy farms that actually make their own butter. There are plenty of them that make farmstead cheese, ice cream and more, but there weren't many making their own butters, particularly their own flavored butters. While we sell others flavored butters here at the home store in Winchendon and at the Worcester Public Market down in Kelley Squre along with farmers markets we attend, they are often very hard to get and sell out quickly. We realized there is a market here for them, and we said if we have the milk, there is another way to get in to other value added products."
With that, the Catlins "let the cat out of the bag" and announced they will not only be selling their own pasteurized non-homogenized milk from their farmstead dairy herd, but also expand into selling a variety of flavored butters, and eventually even different types of yogurt! When asked for a timeline, Catlin said, "We are currently looking to have this new facility functional with everything being hooked up, installed and operational at this time by October 1, so that is currently when we expect to become fully operational and begin producing our bottled milk and butter. That is our goal. Updates will be posted on our facbook page, our Instagram page,and our website."
When asked how his wife, the mother of his children, and fellow business partner Allie felt at first about the expansion, Jake Catlin said with a smile, "She is always a little more cautious than I am, I'm more of a taking a leap first and figure it out afterwords kind of guy, so I did make her a promise that now that we have this facility and product expansion I won't be looking to create any more projects. Now we need to continue to do what we are expected and need to do which is continue at the level of performance with our products our customers expect and demand." Catlin elaborated, "We once ran into a man who came up to us like a guardian angel and said to us, 'You both just need to focus on one thing, just do dairy and do it right. Don't focus on a bunch of other things, just do dairy and do it right.' That stuck with Allie and I from the beginning, and this expansion is again the closing of that loop, and doing dairy, and doing it right. You look at all the things dairy farms make, milk, cheese, butter, yogurt, and it rounds out all the things a dairy farm should be."
Catlin went on, "Our family has spent the last five years perfecting the cheese making, the farming compost operation, learning how to run things efficiently as possible, and we view this as sort of rounding it all out and bringing it full circle." The family business comprises not just Jake and Allie Catlin, but also Jake's own dedicated brother and sister-in-law as co-owners, Mike and Leah Catlin. Mike and Leah work daily side by side with Jake and Allie as both family members and dedicated business partners, and also worked on what the proposal to the state for the grant application was going to be. This new generation of co-owners, just like the one before it, live the dedicated lifestyle of farm life, with their children often seen running, playing, and laughing and saying hello to customers.
"This model we as a family business have gone with, will allow us to get this next expansion off the ground, allowing local residents to purchase more healthy food options locally without having to travel out of town. We were not only surprised and super excited that we won this grant, but now we can bring these things to fruition. They accepted our proposal, and thankfully here we are today," said Catlin.
Discussing the progressing product line Catlin explained there will be multiple flavors of creme line, non-homogenized whole milk. Along with Regular, Chocolate, and Strawberry, Smith's will experiment with different limited-time-only seasonal options down the road with possibilities such as maple milk, pumpkin spice, and even blueberry milk. With the next step of butter production, Catlin explained the need for a standard sea salt, along with spicy, savory, and a sweet butter, possibly a cinnamon sugar butter for toast. The last to round out their profile template of new options for customers will be various flavored yogurt products.
In closing, Catlin was asked about why people should shop local, and why they should support local farms, and local businesses? Catlin replied, "The number one reason why people should support local dairy farm businesses is there has been a dramatic decrease in dairy farms the last two decades particularly as the last two years as milk prices for farms have plummeted. We don't survive without the support of our community, and the surrounding communities. Also, the people who work here are also the people who live around here. Since we have grown we have been able to hire four additional full time workers who are all local community members, and this new facility will add two more additional employees to our payroll when it's all said and done. Not only are you supporting a local business and local families by purchasing our products, you keep it in the area and you also put to work people from the community."
Smith's is located at 20 Otter River Road, Winchendon, MA. It can be reached by phone at 978-939-5738, and contacted via email with on line inquiries at office@smithscountrycheese.com. You can also visit their company website at www.smithscountrycheese.com, visit Smith's on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SmithsCountryCheese, and follow them on Instagram at www.instagram.com/smithscountrycheese/
As seen on these newly updated product labels, all cheese products formerly labeled as Smith's Country Cheese are now labeled "Smith's" as the company is currently hard at work expanding with additional products made with milk from its own farmstead dairy herd.
Photos by Keith Kent
