Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese Leads the Way with Sustainable and Innovative Cheesemaking
About 20 years ago, George and Debbie Crave stepped away from the dairy farm and tried their hand at cheesemaking. Today, they operate Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese, which has received numerous awards for their cheeses and recognition for their focus on sustainability.
The Craves are probably best known for their Fresh Mozzarella. In fact, that was the cheese that started it all. Back in the late 1990s/early 2000s, George was dairy farming but was ready to do something else.
“I knew we had good cows and good milk production. I just didn’t want to milk more cows,” George said. “I started reading and I did a lot of research. Pretty soon I’m talking with some cheese marketers and they suggested making Blue cheese, soft cheese, aged cheese and then finally Fresh Mozzarella so we started with Fresh Mozzarella.”
Working with CDR
In the late 90s, Fresh Mozzarella was still a relatively new product in the U.S. To help develop a make procedure for their Fresh Mozzarella, George turned to the Center for Dairy Research.
“I went in there 21 years ago with about 2 or 3 milk cans of raw milk from our bulk tank and we made Fresh Mozzarella,” George remembers. “John Jaeggi was the first person to make our Fresh Mozzarella. We dialed inthe pH, the cook temp, the molding process; everything.”
Although Fresh Mozzarella was a newer cheese for Wisconsin cheesemakers, John Jaeggi, CDR Cheese Industry & Applications Coordinator, had focused on Fresh Mozzarella in the early 90s as part of the specialty cheese program that Jim Path started at CDR. After the initial trials at CDR, John went out to the Crave’s cheesemaking facility near Waterloo, Wisconsin and helped scale up.
“George was always very forward thinking and he always had a can-do attitude,” Jaeggi said. “He had a unique perspective on how to look at cheesemaking. George’s background is farming, so he didn’t have preconceived ideas on how to make cheese. He’d have different tweaks and twists on how to do things.”
That ability to think outside of the box and be innovative helped George and Debbie in those early years.
“The Fresh Mozzarella was a very young product in the U.S.,” George said. “We learned along the way. We learned from John and John learned from us.”
The Craves also visited Italy to learn more about making Fresh Mozzarella. When they came home, they bought the equipment and began production. “It wasn’t automatic; we had plenty of mistakes,” George remembers. “We had a lot to learn about cooling refrigeration and everything that goes along with it.”
Growing the Business
In addition to George’s background in dairy farming, Debbie worked at the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board (now Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin) and had a strong background in dairy marketing. Still, George emphasizes that he was a novice when he started cheesemaking. One of their first employees was Kurt Premo, a licensed cheesemaker with a Food Science degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“He’s been with us for 21 years,” George said. “Our niece Beth joined us a few years later in 2005 for quality assurance and customer service. We built a team out from there and now have about 4-5 licensed cheesemakers in the building.”
Today, Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese has expanded well beyond Fresh Mozzarella. They also make pizza cheese, Queso Oaxaca, Mascarpone, Farmers Rope, and Cheese Curds. They have about 50-55 employees, depending on the time of year. They’re also currently on their fourth addition to their cheesemaking facility.
They are truly a farmstead operation. The family’s dairy farm sits across the road from the cheese factory. Fresh milk from the dairy farm is piped directly under the road straight to the cheese plant.
“The goal when we started in 2000 was to use 80 percent of the milk from our 400 cows on the farm,” George said. “Now we’re using about that same percentage from our 2,000 high-producing, modern Holsteins.”
Focus on Sustainability
The Crave’s dairy farm operation is modern and cutting-edge. Among other impressive aspects is the farm’s biodigester, which produces energy for the farm and cheese plant and over 300 area homes. The biodigesters consist of two, large 750,000 gallon tanks. Byproducts from the farm and cheese plant as well as other byproducts like brewers grain from local food and beverage producers are added to the tanks.
“The rapid decomposition from the biomass from the farm and the cheese factory produces methane gas, a highly combustible natural gas that powers an internal combustion engine,” George said. “It’s like the engine in your car only the engine is the size of your car and it burns this methane gas, turns an electromagnetic generator that generates enough electricity to power the farm, the cheese factory and about 300 homes."
It’s a big investment and a lot of expertise to get set up and maintained but it is the future of sustainable farming and cheesemaking. The Craves have developed a green logo on their cheese packaging that calls out the Craves’ focus on sustainably. “It’s amazing how it’s become more important and relevant,” Debbie said. “We’re glad because it really helps us tell our story.” Or, as George puts it, “We
were green before green was groovy.”
In addition to electricity, the biodigester’s large engine produces a lot of heat and that warmth is captured and used to heat the buildings. Solids taken from the biodigester are run through a furnace where they are dried and produce a soft, odorless material used for bedding for the cows. Liquid nutrients are also taken from the biodigester and used in the farm’s fertilizer for their crop fields.
The Craves are also focused on sustainability in their cheese plant. In 2020, they received a grant from the Dairy Business Innovation Alliance to help offset the cost of a cooling system for their Fresh Mozzarella line. The system allows water to be recycled, thus cutting down on water usage in the plant.
Always Looking Ahead
When the Crave’s started making Fresh Mozzarella 20 years ago it wasn’t as popular as it is now. It was more of a seasonal cheese – people mostly ate it in the summer in caprese salads. During the other months, business would slow.
“We’d stand by the fax machine and wait for an order and nothing happened,” Debbie remembers. “Thankfully people changed their eating patterns and are excited about different foods. Now we want caprese salad and Fresh Mozzarella on pizza year-round.”
George adds, “No doubt that the foodie movement has helped us tremendously and helped the Wisconsin dairy industry and the cheese that we make here in Wisconsin. You turn on the food channel and they’re talking about using cheese on this or that. We’re also fortunate we have the Italian market and the Hispanic market and that’s been good for us.”
Early on, it was also hard to get some retailers to put the Fresh Mozzarella on their shelves because of challenges of its shorter shelf life. The Craves also learned about the importance of meeting the needs or requests of their customers. To meet those needs, they began making Fresh Mozzarella in all the different sizes and shapes (logs, Ciliegine, Perline, Ovoline, etc.).
“When we started with our Fresh Mozzarella, we made three main sizes and we thought, ‘Yay! We’re done, we did it!’” Debbie said. “But then we heard from our buyers and they want it pearl size, medallions, logs, sliced logs…Consumers want the convenience and choice of all these different sizes. And we realized that’s how you sell more cheese. That was a little eye opener when we started.”
George said, “We’re always doing something different, whether is a different size, shape, pack size, we’re just continuously looking at what’s next. Or what’s another product that we can make that’s unique to us and that we have the capacity for.”
Award-Winning Cheese
At the 2022 Wisconsin State Fair, the Craves were named the Grand Master Cheesemaker with their Chocolate Mascarpone, which scored 99.7 in the flavored soft cheese class. Debbie said they never expected a soft, spreadable cheese like their Chocolate Mascarpone to win the top honors.
“We couldn’t be more surprised and humbled,” Debbie said. “And lots of people were involved in that success from one end of our building to the other.” To recognize everyone’s role, the Craves had photos taken of each of their employees with the State Fair trophy.
The Crave's Fresh Mozzarella has also won numerous awards. Most recently, it took first place in the Fresh Mozzarella category at the American Cheese Society 2022 Judging and Competition. Their Chocolate Mascarpone, Marinated Fresh Mozzarella and Mascarpone also took top three in their respective categories.
Their success can be attributed to George, Debbie and their employees’ hard work. They are also thankful for support available to dairy processors in Wisconsin.
“We have CDR and Madison just 40 minutes away – that’s invaluable,” George said. “I can call Dean Sommer, John Jaeggi, or Mark Johnson and leave a message and they’ll get back to me on any technical question.”
Debbie adds, “CDR has just been a myriad of programs for us from the consulting, the DBIA grant program, and everything else. We know we’re lucky to have this program here and we feel the envy of other states who don’t we have such good support like we do in Wisconsin. And it’s not just the good support, it’s the people.”
For more information about Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese, visit https://www.cravecheese.com/.
This article originally appeared in the Winter 2022 issue of the Dairy Pipeline.