JENNY KUNKA| GreatFalls
When Bob Goff started working at Meadow Gold Dairy in Great Falls 32 years ago, the plant put products in glass bottles that were dropped off at customers’ homes.
Doorstep milk delivery by men in all all-white uniforms and bow ties is a thing of the past, but operations at the Meadow Gold Dairy building at 312 3rd Ave. S. continue. The plant celebrates its 100th anniversary Monday, April 18.
“What used to take four or five people could now be done with one or two and that is how we’ve been able to stay in business for 100 years. That’s how we’ve been able to stay competitive in the dairy delivery business. You have to change with the times,” Goff said.
Meadow Gold is division of Dallas-based Dean Foods, but their products are local, providing locally sourced milk, buttermilk and ice cream mixes —used to make soft-serve ice cream —to grocery stores, restaurants, convenience stores, schools and colleges across Montana.
“We do 1.4 million miles a year,” said Todd Hansen of the delivery side of the business. Hansen is the distribution manager and has been with the company for 26 years. “We go from Great Falls to Wolf Point, to Idaho in the west, down to Butte, Helena, Missoula, Kalispell…” he added.
“It’s quite the operation when you sit down and look at it as a whole,” plant manager Tony Denio said. The milk processed at Meadow Gold comes from 31 farms, all close to Great Falls.
Matt Wavra, production manager who has worked with the company for 32 years, said the plant brings in about 9 million pounds of milk a month. An independent trucking company delivers the milk to Meadow Gold where it is processed and then delivered to customers across the state. Meadow Gold employs 39 staff and 39 drivers to do this work.
“We do about 700,000 gallons a month, including juices, ice cream mixes and milk,” Wavra said.
“This is a product that everybody’s wife and kids and grandmother drinks and we take pride in it and say to ourselves, ‘Is this something you would want you mother to be drinking?’ It’s always been a wholesome kind of thing that you take pride in putting out for years,” Goff said.
Goff is the maintenance lead and during his three decades with the company he’s seen the business evolve. The automation of equipment has been the biggest change.
“It’s the same basic process, it hasn’t changed probably in 100 years of changing raw milk into a pasteurized product that’s safe to drink, but the evolution of the automation of the equipment has really made a difference,” he said.
The business was born on April 18, 1916, when Henningson Creamery bought Falls Dairy Products Co. and built a new building, “constructed of beautiful Helena granite stone,” according to a chapter in “A Centennial Celebration,” by Ellan Yuill, published in 1984.
A 100 years ago, the business sold pasteurized milk, cream, butter, ice cream and buttermilk. The plant was later purchased and restructured as Northern Creamery Company and in 1930, the Meadow Gold division of Beatrice Foods took over Northern Creamery and two other creameries in the state.
“Cream was purchased from local dairies and directly from farmers in 10 gallon cans. Sweet cream, which was made into ice cream, brought the highest price, while sour cream was used to make butter. The farmer left his cream can by the side of the road for dairy trucks to pick up each day,” Yuill wrote.
In Great Falls, Meadow Gold once made ice cream novelties such as Dixie Cups, Milknickles and Fudgesicles. In the 1950s about a dozen women and half a dozen men worked in the novelty department alone.
Butter was also a popular product.
“In 1941, five or six women were employed exclusively to wrap butter. Margaret Bacon, an early day employee recalls that they were paid 25 cents an hour, often wrapping 5,000 to 6,000 pounds of butter a day,” Yuill wrote in “A Centennial Celebration.”
Some of the changes from the dairy’s early days to the present time have been drastic, especially in terms of the processing. Other aspects of Meadow Gold, however, have stayed constant.
“There is a certain mindset a company has that gets them to the century mark as far as what’s required to stay in business,” Denio said, “Taking care of the customer. Putting out high quality products. Treating your employees well.”
Wavra said they’ve had fathers and sons working at Meadow Gold and one family had a grandfather start at the dairy, followed by a father and now the grandson works for the company.
A good relationship with their producers has also been key.
“The colonies have been with us for many years,” Wavra said. The Hutterite Colonies have been an important partner in the dairy business and a part of Meadow Gold’s success.
“They are literally 10 years ahead of producers in other states as far as cleanliness and technology,” Denio added. “It’s neat we have that opportunity to bring in the freshest and the highest quality milk in the nation.”
This relationship with producers is vital because the dairy business is unique and not easy. Farmers must get up at the crack of dawn and milk every single day. There are no days off.
Denio said that employees, producers and customers have all been an important part of Meadow Gold’s 100 years.
Wavra summed up their success by saying, “You are here for 100 years for one reason, it’s that you are putting out a quality product that people enjoy drinking and we have optimum employees that keep this place going and are dedicated to their positions.”
