Jan 15, 2024 | Lamers Dairy News
APPLETON, Wis. — Wisconsin has lost 64,000 dairy farms in the last five decades, according to the Wisconsin State Farmer. The future of Wisconsin’s dairy production may be under some pressure, but one dairy in northeast Wisconsin is celebrating more than a century in business.
What You Need To Know
- Since 1913, five generations of the Lamers family have provided the highest quality dairy products to families in Wisconsin and beyond
- Customers can watch their milk being processed at the Appleton dairy farm
- Lamers trademark glass bottled milk is the customers favorite product
- 10,000 plastic bottles and 5,000 glass bottles roll off the assembly line daily
Mark Lamers is the President of Lamers Dairy. Lamers said milk has always been a part of his life. He said Lamers Dairy started when his great-grandfather Jacob Lamers sold his first cans of milk to families in Kimberly, Wisconsin in 1913. Three generations later, Lamers said he was working on his family’s dairy farm.
“I grew up in a family of eight kids. And at one point in the other, everybody in the family worked here, whether it was on the weekends, or they did it for their full-time job,” Mark Lamers said.
The cans eventually gave way to glass bottles. The milk is also no longer processed in the countryside. Lamers said he brought the dairy to customers in Appleton.
“When we built the facility here, we said it’d be nice for our customers to be able to come in and see the milk being bottled. Then they can watch the milk, go right to the filling machines right in your cooler, and buy that same milk right off our store shelf,” Lamers said.
Ten thousand plastic gallons and five thousand glass bottles of milk roll off the assembly lines daily.
Eric McGuire has worked at Lamers for 18 years. He’s currently the vice president of business operations. McGuire said the Lamers trademark glass bottle is a customer favorite.
“They are just a little bit more sustainable. Our customers number one liked the way the product tasted and the glass better,” Eric McGuire said.
It’s no surprise that there’s another popular product at Lamers Dairy.
“Our cheese boxes which you can find in our retail store. We do about 3000 cheese boxes a year,” McGuire said.
While milk may be the golden ticket, Lamers said patience and keeping his shelves stocked with other high-quality dairy products has helped them in business for more than a century.
“A slow steady growth is what my father always taught us growing up in the business and never put too much into one one source,” Lamers said.
Lamers said he’s thankful he’s part of continuing a business started 110 years ago.
“It’s quite an accomplishment that Lamers is a family business that my great grandfather started. There’s not a lot of people that can say that. Being blessed with our operation and what we do, how we do things. It’s been a great joy to do that and we hope we can continue that going forward,” Lamers said.
Click here to see the full story online.
Jan 11, 2024 | Lamers Dairy News
(WFRV) – This week we celebrated “National Milk Day” in honor of the day the first glass bottled milk was delivered to customers.
Lamers Dairy in Appleton still uses glass to package some of its products. They source milk from farms within 30 miles of their plant.
The company is celebrating a milestone 110 years in business.
Click here to view the segment.
Life on the Farm is a partnership with Fox Valley Technical College. FVTC offers 14 Agriculture programs of study, including Associate Degree programs in Agribusiness Science & Technology – Animal Science and Agriculture Power Equipment. Classes are offered online and in-person to accommodate busy schedules. Learn more about an education in Agriculture, Horticulture & Natural Resources at FVTC.
Dec 11, 2023 | Lamers Dairy News
A fifth-generation family in the Fox Valley is celebrating 110 years in business this year, and every December, thousands of customers enjoy one of their holiday specialties: Eggnog
Lamers Dairy is the largest producer of eggnog in Northeast Wisconsin.
“This is a good time of year because it’s something that we do that’s a little bit special and unique and a little bit different than just fluid dairy milk,” said Eric Mcguire, the VP of Business Operations at Lamers Dairy.
“We’ve been doing it ever since we’ve been in business, it’s a holiday treat and I think this year when I look at the numbers, we’ll be somewhere in the neighborhood of 25,000 gallons of just eggnog,” said Mark Lamers, the President of Lamers Dairy.
As one of only three fluid milk plants left in the state of Wisconsin, Lamers is all about quality, and it’s found the right formula for a successful business model.
“In our programs with our farmers, what we do is we pay them an extra premium for producing the highest quality milk possible and by doing that our customers have come to recognize that good quality product, so they support us,” said Lamers. “As long as you keep putting out a good quality product, people will keep buying it.”
While the vast majority of milk from dairy farms in the state goes into cheesemaking, Lamers has five farms, all within 30 miles, that supply their award-winning milk.
“It all starts on the farm, until the day I die I’m going to give all the credit to our farmers because I always think it’s like a computer, garbage in, garbage out, so if we don’t get that good quality milk into our processing facility, we can’t make a good product,” said Lamers. “If we can make people’s lives better by producing a good quality product, makes them feel better, then that’s all part of it too.”
CLICK HERE to see the full story online.
Copyright 2023 WBAY. All rights reserved.
