By Kate Sander

MUSCODA, Wis. — “Sustainability” in recent years has become a buzzword for many companies. For Meister Cheese Co., though, it is much more than a buzzword; it has been a matter of practice for more than 30 years.

Scott Meister, president of Meister Cheese and the third generation of the Meister family to operate the business, calls it “logical environmentalism.” The company isn’t eco-friendly just because it’s the right thing to do. That’s certainly part of it, but science has shown that oftentimes the least wasteful ways of doing things also are the most cost-effective, leading the company’s executives to make “proper economic decisions,” Meister says.

Those ecological and economic-friendly decisions have naturally arisen as the company has shifted its positioning from that of a commodity cheese manufacturer to a producer of award-winning specialty cheeses.

The company was founded in the 1920s by Scott Meister’s grandfather as a manufacturer of Cheddar and Monterey Jack blocks, a business it did well for many years. But in the 1980s and early 1990s, it became clear to Scott Meister, who now operated the business, that only the largest companies would be successful in the commodity market. Specialty cheeses, particularly in Wisconsin, were beginning to evoke interest, and Meister met with cheese marketer and brand maker Dan Carter of Dan Carter Inc. (now DCI Cheese Co.). Meister credits Carter with playing a key role in the ideas behind the repositioning of Meister Cheese Co. as a producer of both branded and private label specialty cheese.

Today, the company is known for its Great Midwest brand, and wedges of its flavored Jacks can be found in stores nationwide. Meister Cheese produces Cheddar and Jack, though it’s best known for its Jack and the many flavors of Jack the company can produce. About two-thirds of the company’s cheese is sold under private label and the rest is branded under the Great Midwest label, the Timber Lake label (for Cheddar) and other smaller company-owned brands.

“Most customers prefer the flavor of flavored Monterey Jack cheese vs. Cheddar cheese because of the nature of Jack — it carries the added flavors better than others,” Meister says.

“We have the ability to custom formulate any flavor imaginable,” Meister adds, noting that his sister, Vicki Thingvold, is talented in helping develop the company’s wide variety of flavor options.

The company’s current best seller is its Morel & Leek Jack. “Anything with peppers” also does well, including Meister Cheese’s Three Alarm Colby-Jack that contains jalapeno, chipotle and habanero peppers, Meister says. In addition, Horseradish Cheddar is popular and the company also has recently introduced flavored Mozzarella.

It’s not just the flavors of the cheese that make them specialty, though. Meister Cheese has the size and scale to deliver high-margin “gourmet style” cheeses that evoke artisanal quality and build brand loyalty — all without the supply-line concerns that come with “small batch” manufacturers, Meister says.

The company also makes traditional, non-flavored varieties, and all of the company’s cheeses, whether flavored or not, start from high-quality milk. In fact, the high density of family farms in Southwestern Wisconsin means it takes fewer “food miles” for Meister Cheese to produce its cheeses — one of the cornerstones of its sustainability efforts.

Southwestern Wisconsin, Meister says, is a rich tapestry of rolling hills and dales, home of rich farmland and pastures ideally suited for smaller family dairy farms. Meister Cheese buys its milk only from these local farms, giving the cheese both a connection to the local families and land, but also minimizing transportation costs and carbon emissions.

The company’s onsite capabilities also reduce “food miles.” Meister Cheese operates its own onsite cutting, packaging and labeling facilities to eliminate the need to ship its blocks miles away to be sized and individually wrapped for sale.

In addition, Meister Cheese uses food-quality plastic cheesemaking hoops for its 40-pound blocks, eliminating the need for thousands of pounds of unrecyclable cheesecloth that line conventional stainless steel cheesemaking hoops. The company recycles its gently used single-use cheese boxes rather than throwing them away, another environmentally-friendly move that also results in cost savings, Meister notes.

The company actively works to minimize its waste streams as well. Meister Cheese has been at its current location in the Muscoda Industrial Park since Meister’s father, Stanley, moved the company there in the 1970s. Simultaneously, Stanley Meister opened a business that works hand-in-hand with Meister Cheese — Muscoda Protein Products.

At a time when most people were trying to find the cheapest way to get rid of whey, then an under-utilized byproduct of the cheesemaking process, Stanley Meister studied the properties of whey and saw an opportunity to utilize it as a food product.

Today Muscoda Protein Products, headed up by Scott’s brother Mike Meister, purchases whey from cheese companies around the area and further processes it as an ingredient for a variety of food applications.

For wastewater from the two companies, they also strive to utilize the most environmentally-appropriate systems possible. For example, a ridge-and-furrow treatment system is utilized for lower strength cleanup wastewater. The system is planted with moisture-tolerant perennial grasses and wastewater is distributed through many furrows, where it is available to the plant roots. The plants take up and treat the water through the natural process of evapotranspiration.

All of these combined efforts have led Meister Cheese to expand rapidly in recent years.

In 2002, Meister Cheese undertook a major expansion that tripled the size of the facility.

And in 2005, three decades after Stanley Meister began looking for ways to change whey from waste to a value-added product, Meister Cheese and Muscoda Protein Products together took another step to further their sustainability efforts by making changes to rely on a renewable energy source.

Muscoda and the surrounding area is home to five sawmills, Meister says. These mills produce wood chips as a byproduct, and the mills were having to truck the wood chips a few hundred miles to get rid of them. So Meister Cheese and Muscoda Protein Products installed a Clean-Tech furnace that turns wood waste —- about 27 tons daily — into clean energy, leaving about a single drum of recyclable flyash, and reducing the companies’ natural gas use by about 600,000 therms per year — enough to heat more than 650 homes.

ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY — Meister Cheese’s Clean Tech furnace turns a neighboring factory’s wood waste into clean energy.

The changes at Meister Cheese aren’t through yet. This month the company breaks ground on yet another expansion, adding new milk intake areas and a new make room and converting the current make room into additional packaging space.

With these additions, the company will continue to have room to grow as it custom formulates products for customers, Meister says. He notes the company has the ability to procure and produce cheese to a number of specifications, including rbST-free, organic and grassfed.

As the company has grown, so too has its staff, from about 12 associates in the early 1990s to well over 70 today.

“Our associates are like extended family and deserve due credit for our continued growth,” Meister says.

CMN