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CapitalPress.com
July 10, 2015
People & Places
Takeover opportunity leads to creamery’s revival
Rogue Creamery
wins acclaim as
it expands its
offerings
Established 1928
Board of directors
Mike Forrester ..........................President
Steve Forrester
Kathryn Brown
Sid Freeman .................. Outside director
Mike Omeg .................... Outside director
Corporate officer
John Perry
Chief operating officer
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press Managers
Mike O’Brien .............................Publisher
Joe Beach ..................................... Editor
Elizabeth Yutzie Sell .... Advertising Director
Carl Sampson ................Managing Editor
Barbara Nipp ......... Production Manager
Samantha McLaren .... Circulation Manager
Capital Press
CENTRAL POINT, Ore.
— David Gremmels and
Cary Bryant got more than
they intended when trying to
buy some cheese from Rogue
Creamery.
In 2002, they were launch-
ing a wine-and-cheese bar and
asked the creamery’s owner,
Ig Vella, to become a supplier.
Vella’s response was sur-
prising, remembers Grem-
mels: “Fellas, if you want my
cheese you’re going to have to
make it yourselves.”
Then in his early 70s, Vel-
la was exhausted from split-
ting his time between Rogue
Creamery in Central Point,
Ore., and Vella Cheese in
Sonoma, Calif. It was becom-
ing apparent that he needed to
focus on one business, so Vel-
la decided to sell or close his
operation in Oregon.
Though the proposal was
a significant departure from
their original plans, Grem-
mels and Bryant leapt at the
opportunity and agreed to buy
the company that same day.
They spent the next year
learning the cheese-making
craft from Vella and traveling
to Europe to compare differ-
ent techniques.
Meanwhile, the company
was on shaky financial foot-
ing, so the wine-and-cheese
bar was put on hold while they
devoted capital and time to but-
tressing the creamery.
“We had to make a profit. I
couldn’t sell things at a loss,”
said Gremmels. “We worked
hard and we worked day and
night.”
While new to cheese-mak-
ing, they brought modern skills
to the creamery, which was
founded in 1933.
Gremmels had spent his
career building the brands of
clothing and home furnishing
companies before he was re-
cruited to a marketing position
at the Harry & David fruit bas-
ket company, which brought
him to Oregon’s Rogue Valley.
Bryant, on the other hand,
was able to put his training as a
microbiologist to use.
“Cary brought the strict sci-
ence with the recipes, the test-
ing and the fine-tuning,” said
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Photos by Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
David Gremmels, owner of the Rogue Creamery in Central Point, Ore., took over the company in 2002 with partner Cary Bryant. The
company has since won international acclaim and has returned to profitability.
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Western Innovator
Rogue Creamery
Owners: David Gremmels and Cary
Bryant
News Staff
Founded: 1933
N. California
Tim Hearden .................... 530-y05-3072
Employees: 43
Location: Central Point, Ore.
E Idaho
John O’Connell ................. 208-421-4347
Products: 30 cheese varieties, shelf-stable blue cheese powder,
upcoming ice cream line
Idaho
Carol Ryan Dumas .......... 208-8y0-3898
Vertical integration: Company owns cheese-making plant, retail
Boise
Sean Ellis .......................... 208-914-82y4
shop, cold storage and packaging facility, 70-acre dairy farm
Gremmels.
The change in ownership
also brought some new flair to
the company’s products.
Rogue Creamery’s blue
cheeses are still made with the
same strain of mold that Tom
Vella, Ig’s father, imported from
France, where it’s used to make
Roquefort from sheep’s milk.
Gremmels and Bryant ad-
justed the recipe for the Rogue
River Blue by wrapping it in
Syrah wine grape leaves and
soaking it in artisanal brandy.
Their innovation brought
outstanding results — the va-
riety won the title of Best Blue
Cheese at the World Cheese
Awards in London in 2003.
The award put Rogue
Creamery on the global map of
fine cheese-makers, helping the
company to achieve profitabili-
ty and 20 percent annual sales
growth since Gremmels and
Bryant took over.
The company attained an-
other milestone in 2007, when
it crossed food safety hurdles to
become the first U.S. creamery
to export raw milk cheese to the
European Union.
Whole Foods, a high-end
grocery store chain, is now
Rogue Creamery’s largest cus-
tomer, carrying its cheeses in
more than 400 stores.
Over the past 13 years, the
creamery has gone from “neg-
ligible sales” to a “multi-mil-
lion-dollar company,” said
Gremmels.
It’s also taken steps to be-
come vertically integrated with
the 2012 purchase of its own
organic-certified 70-acre dairy
farm, which currently supplies
more than half the creamery’s
milk with 120 cows.
The goal is to double
the herd’s size over the next
year and become completely
self-sufficient.
By controlling its source
of milk, the creamery gains
A cheese display at the Rogue Creamery’s retail shop in Central
Point, Ore.
certainty about quality and
production practices at a time
when many dairy farmers in the
region have retired from the in-
dustry, said Gremmels.
The dairy can also serve as
a “sustainable model” for oth-
er operations with its organic
practices and robotic milking
system that reduces labor and
cow stress, he said. “We hope
to inspire other dairy people
to come online and join us in
producing milk in Southern Or-
egon.”
Aside from securing Rogue
Creamery’s milk supply, the
farm provides a new way to
communicate with the pub-
lic, said Francis Plowman, the
company’s “cheese narrator.”
“We think that will be a very
big tourist attraction,” he said.
The operation’s agritour-
ism appeal will coincide nicely
with the company’s upcoming
line of ice cream, which will
be made with honey and other
“pure and simple ingredients,”
Plowman said.
Ice cream is part of the
company’s venture into fresh
— rather than aged — dairy
products, such as mozzarella,
he said.
Because they don’t have to
sit in inventory for an extended
time before sale, fresh products
improve cash flow.
Rogue Creamery has also
recently found a profitable use
for blue cheese that doesn’t
meet the company’s “top tier”
quality requirements: it’s turned
into a shelf-stable powder.
The powder has proven
popular as a stand-alone con-
diment as well as a bulk ingre-
dient that’s sold to food man-
ufacturers, Plowman said. “It
really has the taste profile of
our blue cheeses.”
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Bangladesh-based group founder wins World Food Prize
By DAVID PITT
Associated Press
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)
— A man who created a non-
profit organization credited
with helping more than 150
million people out of poverty
was named the winner of the
2015 World Food Prize on
Wednesday.
Fazle Hasan Abed, of
Bangladesh, created BRAC,
the organization originally
known as Bangladesh Rural
Advancement Committee, as
a temporary relief organiza-
tion to help the country re-
cover from the 1970 typhoon
that killed about 500,000
people and the subsequent
war fought in 1971 to win
independence from Pakistan.
Bangladesh was once listed
as the second poorest country
in the world.
BRAC has grown into
one of the world’s largest
nongovernmental organiza-
tions focused on alleviating
poverty — estimated to have
helped more than 150 million
people out of poverty in Afri-
ca and Asia and is expanding
efforts to 10 additional coun-
tries.
“Poverty is a multidi-
mensional thing. It’s not just
lack of income or lack of
employment, it’s also lack of
opportunity, lack of educa-
tion, lack of opportunity for
health care and so on,” Abed,
79, told The Associated Press
in a telephone interview from
Bangladesh.
Agriculture Secretary Tom
Vilsack announced the prize
on Wednesday at the State
Department in Washington.
The World Food Prize
was created by Nobel laure-
ate Norman Borlaug in 1986
to recognize scientists and
others who have improved
the quality and availability
of food. The foundation that
awards the $250,000 prize is
based in Des Moines, Iowa.
World Food Prize Pres-
ident Kenneth Quinn said
the ability of Abed, who was
knighted in London in Febru-
ary 2010, to successfully tran-
sition BRAC it into a global
relief organization was the
key to his win.
“What distinguishes him is
the incredibly difficult envi-
ronment in which he has built
now the largest, and some
would say, the most effective
and far reaching nonprofit
organization anywhere in the
world with more than 100,000
employees,” Quinn said. “It’s
his emphasis on reaching to
the very poor those who have
Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee via AP
This 2012 photo provided by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement
Committee shows Sir Fazle Hasan Abed during a visit to the BRAC
School in the Karail slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Abed, who creat-
ed BRAC, a nonprofit organization credited with helping more than
150 million people out of poverty, was chosen July 1 as this year’s
recipient of the World Food Prize.
great food insecurity and who
face the most difficult path out
of poverty.”
The initial focus of BRAC,
Abed told the AP, was on al-
leviating high child and infant
mortality rates by provid-
ing social services including
health care. He also saw the
need to empower women and
get them to see they could
also contribute to the national
economy, so he helped teach
them to farm efficiently and
grow surplus crops to sell.
“Sir Fazle’s and his or-
ganization’s recognition that
engaging women in STEAM
fields — science, technology,
engineering, agriculture, and
math — benefits our local and
global communities is a vi-
sion that we share at USDA,”
Vilsack said.
BRAC estimates more than
a billion people live at a pov-
erty level of less than $1.25 a
day but hundreds of millions
of others live on less than half
that amount and are consid-
ered in extreme poverty.
The organization also has
created a pilot program that
helps those in extreme pover-
ty work their way out; it’ll be
used in eight other countries
to see if results can be repli-
cated. Participants receive a
weekly stipend so they have
enough money to eliminate
the need to beg or work at
menial labor to survive. A
savings account and financial
literacy training helps teach
them to manage money, and
a one-time grant provides a
productive asset — such as
a cow, goats or chickens —
as a means to work toward
self-sufficiency.
“In many countries, poor
people are not seen as a solu-
tion to the problem but the
problem. Poor people can be
organized and become the
solution to the poverty them-
selves,” he said. “All we need
to do is provide them opportu-
nities and conditions and give
them the tools.
“The hard work is done by
the poor themselves to defeat
poverty.”
The United Nations De-
velopment Program reports
Bangladesh has reduced
poverty from 56.7 percent in
1991-1992 to 31.5 percent in
2010, the latest year data is
available.
Abed will be awarded the
World Food Prize at a ceremo-
ny in October in Des Moines.
Calendar
Saturday, July 11
94th Annual Idaho Ram & Ewe Sale, 8
a.m., Twin Falls County Fairgrounds, Filer,
Idaho.
Friday, July 17
Forestry Shortcourse, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. West
Bonner Library, Priest River, Idaho, 208-44y-
1y80. This y-session program will help forest
owners understand ecology, silviculture,
wildlife and other topics.
Saturday, July 18
Washington State Sheep Producers Ram &
Ewe Sale, 11: 30 a.m.-y p.m. Grant County
Fairgrounds, Moses Lake, Wash.
Tuesday, Aug. 4
Saturday, Sunday, Aug. 15-16
Spotted Wing Drosophila Workshop, 9 a.m.-1
p.m. Eugene Unitarian Universalist Church,
Eugene, Ore., 208-850-y504. Topics include
understanding SWD biology, behavior and
seasonal needs; SWD management tools
and practices; monitoring and identification;
and fruit sampling demonstrations.
Harvest Fest, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Yamhill Valley
Heritage Center Museum, McMinnville, Ore.,
503-434-0490. Tractor parade, threshing,
binding and baling oats using antique
farming equipment and horses. Pioneer kids
area, agricultural displays, music, food and
fun.
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Index
California ................................ 8
Dairy .................................... 13
Idaho ...................................... 9
Livestock ............................. 13
Markets ............................... 15
Opinion .................................. y
Oregon ................................ 10
Washington ..........................11
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