Highly Cultured
Design by Alex Povis. Photo by Jennifer Silverberg.
Third-generation dairy farmer Kurt Bizenberger didn’t set out to make yogurt: He went broke.
“I milked 300 cows in here, twice a day,” he says, gesturing to a now almost-empty barn outfitted with some milking equipment. “It wasn’t feasible – [you] can’t afford to stay in business just selling to co-ops. The price [of milk] fluctuates so much; you never know what you’re gonna get.”
Bizenberger’s parents originally operated a dairy farm near Scott Air Force Base in St. Clair County, Illinois, but they were forced out in 1994 due to eminent domain when MidAmerica St. Louis Airport was built. The family relocated to Trenton, Illinois, and began building the new farm that same year.
“We were used to living in a valley with no wind,” Bizenberger says with a smile. “It’s so windy up here – we had dust in our eyes that whole summer – so my dad says, ‘Let’s call this place Windcrest.’ That was nearly 25 years ago.”
Fast-forward to 2009, when Bizenberger was faced with selling his family’s farm or finding a way to make ends meet. A friend of his who sold him animal feed knew a fourth-generation dairy farmer, Steve Eickmeyer, who runs a family farm 35 miles south of Trenton that supplies milk to Dean Foods and Chester Dairy Co. out of Chester, Illinois. He was also looking for a way out of the milk-price rat race.
“I searched for a long time, and I found another knucklehead like me who milks cows,” Bizenberger says with a laugh. “He invested with us [and] gave me enough money to get started.”
Eickmeyer originally wanted to make cheese – he now defers to nearby Marcoot Jersey Creamery and sells some of its cheeses at the Windcrest farmstead grocery store in Trenton – and Bizenberger wanted to bottle small-batch milk. Instead, they realized that nobody in the region was doing yogurt, despite its increasing popularity.
Windcrest Dairy began making traditional and Greek-style yogurt that year in Trenton after visiting Sugar River Dairy in Albany, Wisconsin – one of the Midwest’s few yogurt creameries – and adapting its recipe. To their knowledge, Windcrest has the smallest grade-A processing plant for a dairy farm in the state of Illinois.
“Name recognition, word of mouth: That’s how we’ve gotten the product where it is today,” Eickmeyer says. “But our competition – the Dannons, the Yoplaits – they’re huge. They throw away more than we make.”
The two dairy farmers first got Windcrest into Schnucks and Dierbergs stores in St. Louis and southern Illinois by delivering samples in person, picking up $20 in sales here and there. Eventually, Windcrest picked up larger accounts, too – including Eataly Chicago, Washington University in St. Louis, Saint Louis University and Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis – but it’s difficult to compete with national brands that work with giant food distributors like Sysco and US Foods. Windcrest yogurt is also sold in smaller stores in the St. Louis area including Straub’s, Fields Foods and Local Harvest Grocery, plus a few in southern Illinois.
“It takes a special manager to appreciate it because it costs more,” Bizenberger says. “Once you get people to try it, [they buy it].”