On Finding a Dairy Niche

We’ve all heard the phrase “the riches are in the niches”. So what the heck does that really mean, especially for a dairy farmer?!

Niche means a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service. So a little piece of the market separate and individual to your goals, beliefs and strengths. It’s your specialty, and what you’re known for.

When we started on farm, we produced milk. That’s it. Plain white vat-pasteurized creamline milk, to be exact.

And we didn’t add to that product for over a year! Why? Because we didn’t need to. Our customers learned to know us for our classic white half gallon of milk. But after about a year, we had the idea to add more value (ahem, money) to our milk by bottling in pints. So we started with white creamline pints, but then we knew we could capture so many more people by adding flavors. But instead of going crazy with numbers of flavors (which we knew was not going to be our thing– making all those labels and having them all approved by the state was too much work), we opted to stick with white and chocolate year round and add a seasonal flavor in the summer, fall and winter. So we create a total of 5 milk flavors throughout the year, but only 3 at any one time.

And our farm is still known for our milk. We took a niche in the dairy market and though we slightly expanded, we’re still a pretty niche dairy market. And this is what put us on the map and got our initial trust with our local community: a simple niche of creamline milk.

You probably know by now that we’ve since added our own gelato and yogurt, but not until we had the trust from our community. We first taught them that we could be relied on for a high quality product, consistently. It was over 3 years into our business before we added gelato, and I think it has taken off because we already had developed our community’s trust because we started with very niche market.

Here are some ideas of niche dairy markets that I completely trust will build you a loyal customer base:

• raw milk
• cheese (hard or soft, or both)
• yogurt (I would recommended picking a type: Skyr, Greek, Regular yogurt, Kefir, Smoothies)
• ice cream (or gelato, as we’ve done)
• flavored milks (a local farm near us has TONS of flavors and their customers seem to love all the variety)
• glass bottled milk
• coffee creamers

My best advice to new farmers to pick ONE THING and get really good at it, building a loyal following before you expand into several dairy products. Plus, it makes it so much easier for you!

Let me know what niche you’re using at your dairy farm?!

Lisa