They Market Ice Cream Through CSA

They Market Ice Cream Through CSA FARM HOME Food A Minnesota CSA is doing a booming business selling a sweet product – ice cream It has given a great boost to word-of-mouth advertising and the customers who pay for Community Supported Agriculture shares helped buy the equipment to make the ice cream Because they are near town and didn’t have room to expand their dairy operation in 2003 Bob and Jeanette Kappers of Chatfield Minn decided to keep their herd small and direct market their own milk They reduced their 50-cow herd to 30 and started bottling milk in returnable bottles They make door-to-door deliveries and sell at farmers markets local stores and at their on-farm store Their biggest seller is non-homogenized skim milk which means they have lots of leftover cream Though they have restaurant owners who buy cream for soups and other dishes during the summer they had excess cream in the winter Making ice cream was a natural solution “We needed to finance purchasing of the machine and so we came up with the CSA idea We had seen how CSA worked for growers at the farmer’s market ” Bob Kappers explains In 2012 the couple posted sign-up sheets and it didn’t take long for nearly 200 customers to commit and prepay for half and full shares To make sure they would have enough ice cream the couple sold coupons to be used over a 2 or 3 year period Customers can pick up a pint at a time or 10 pints if they choose; they just need to use coupons before they expire that year Kappers and his wife spent a lot of time developing a recipe using natural ingredients: milk cream sugar eggs and vanilla Guar gum is added to hold it together “It has a real homemade ice cream taste because we use real eggs and sugar ” Kappers says They make vanilla and chocolate ice cream and are experimenting with other flavors The couple and a helper usually make ice cream in the evening after Jeanette gets home from her job They make 30 to 35 gal at a time and can produce 12 to 15 pints every 7 min They average about 500 pints a week “The nice thing about ice cream is that it has a shelf life ” Kappers says “We date it out nine months but I tried some I made in December 2012 and it’s still good ” The Kapperses make most of their ice cream during the winter and have been surprised how strong the sales are during cold weather Besides their CSA customers who pay less per pint they sell the ice cream for $3/pint at their on-farm store It sells for slightly higher at the year-round Rochester Downtown Farmers Market where they regularly sell all their dairy products including milk and cheese curds Take time to plan out the details meet all the FDA requirements and figure out a good recipe Kappers advises others considering selling ice cream Being located within about 20 min of the city of Rochester provides a good market base but many regular customers are local and like to know where their food comes from “Setting up a CSA has worked really well for us ” Kappers says Contact: FARM SHOW Followup Bob and Jeanette Kappers Kappers Big Red Barn 33218 Co Rd 5 Chatfield Minn 55923 ph 507 867-3556; valleykkappers@aol com; www kappersbigredbarn com

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