Let's Talk Numbers: Creamery Style
Let’s talk numbers:
Though our creamery was finally “officially” started in 2020, the journey started in 2017. Jesse’s family had to sell their herd of dairy cows, and Jesse couldn’t stand by and watch 38 years of his parents hard work and effort in that lineage die away. He brought home two heifer calves, and the journey to start our creamery commenced. We knew we had 2 years to breed the calves and then about 9 months to find a way to sell their milk. We had work to do.
We had a very limited budget and knew we didn’t want to embark in a new journey riddled with debt. We’re fans of Dave Ramsey and spent years digging ourselves out of personal/student loan debt: after a taste of financial freedom we knew we didn’t want to go back. So we saved and skimped and did as much as we could by ourselves. We built a barn addition and got some used tie stalls from Jesse’s parents’ barn and turned our humble horse barn into a makeshift dairy facility. Our barn addition was small, and we did it ourselves to save funds.
Then, the real expenses came. We researched creamery designs and raw vs pasteurized milk sales and settled on vat-pasteurization (long story for another day). After we looked and looked, we felt an immediate connection with Frank Kipe of Microdairy Designs. In fact, before we ever knew we wanted to do this creamery, we heard his story on a podcast years before and immediately connected with him. Frank was so gracious and walked us through so many steps to decide how and where to start. And he offered a 10% off bonus for paying in cash, so we were sold. We started with the original 15gallon vat pasteurization system, which you can find HERE. It’s a very simple system, but it’s what we could afford and thus, where we started.
We also had to buy a bulk tank, a bucket milker, a storage refrigerator (which we got for $50 at an estate sale), electric upgrades and all the sterilizers/cleaners and supplies to get milking. All in total: just under $30k was our total investment (including our barn addition) to get this little Microdairy and creamery up and running. Yep, that’s the real number.
Honestly, we thought it had to be so much more than that, based on the other podcasts we’d heard and stories we were told. But Frank Kipe, combined with our understanding of Dave Ramsey’s money principles, proved otherwise.
Recently, I was listening to a PA dairy podcast and heard the most ridiculous advice given by a dairy farmer with on-farm creamery: he said it takes A MILLION DOLLARS to start. A MILLION DOLLARS. What in the world. I know my mouth dropped and I gasped. Jesse had a similar reaction, which I filmed and turned into a reel.
But the big picture and the reason for all my rambling today is this: you don’t need a million dollars to get into value-added dairy processing. You just don’t. It’s as simple as profit margins: if you borrow a million dollars, you’ll need to milk a lot of cows and sell a lot of dairy to make a go. But what if you don’t spend a ton of money: maybe the amount of a used truck? Then, you don’t have to milk that many cows to make a good living. We milk 8-10 at any point in the year. And we’ve already crossed six figures in revenue in 2023. And we’re not killing ourselves to make a good living. If you want our real, actual numbers, I've even created a download for you.
And you can, too. Trust me, there is nothing special about us: we were just committed to trying and also committed to our values.
We’re rooting for you!
Lisa