MONROE, Wis. — Klondike Cheese Co., run by the Buholzer family of Monroe, Wis., is used to changing with the times. Once a Swiss plant and then a Cheddar plant, with a few other cheeses tossed in between, the company is now known for its Feta.

Feta has been the mainstay of Klondike since the mid-1990s. Though the Buholzer family got into the Feta business thinking it would be a good business move, they had no idea how much of a part of Klondike Feta would become.

"We thought it could be a good cheese to make in terms of fit for the plant and it being an economically good product for us," says Ron Buholzer, president, Klondike. "Rather rapidly, the Feta sales really grew to the point where we had to quit doing something else."

First produced at the plant in 1988, by the mid-1990s Feta demand had pushed Mozzarella and Colby production out of the plant. The longhorns the company was making came to be no more. Today, Klondike manufactures Feta, Muenster, Brick and Farmers cheese for foodservice, as well as Feta that is sold under a dozen different private labels. Feta also is marketed under the company's own Odyssey brand. The company produces around 14 million pounds of cheese annually.

Demand keeps growing for Feta cheese, says Buholzer, who says the company offers the cheese in Traditional, Tomato & Basil and Peppercorn flavors. The company also will be rolling out its newest flavor, Mediterranean Herb, this month.

"Feta as a category has really gone beyond 'grown' — it's exploded," Buholzer says. "More people have become aware of Feta and how to use it."

Demand has so grown so strong, in fact, that it has sparked the Buholzers to undertake a major plant expansion which will more than double the plant's current size.

The plant, currently 38,000 square feet, will soon see an addition of 43,000 square feet that includes production, cold storage and dry storage space. Construction started last November and, if all goes well, Buholzer hopes to be producing cheese in the new portion of the plant by mid-July.

Feta manufacturing will be moved to the new part of the plant, enabling increases in Feta production as well as in Muenster, Brick and Farmers cheese. The plant will be big enough to handle the company's needs well into the future, Buholzer believes. With the first stage of equipment in the plant, he hopes to boost production by about 5 million pounds of cheese annually. But with the addition of more equipment, the plant will have the capacity to produce more than 10 million pounds of cheese over what it does currently.

"We'd like in two to three years to fully utilize that extra 5 million pounds of capacity on the Feta end and expand Muenster production," Buholzer says. "But we're not going to be driven by sales for the sake of sales. We want this to be an orderly, profitable business — not volume for the sake of volume."

Klondike's growth over the years has resulted largely from family devotion to the business as well as flexibility, Buholzer believes.

"We're a family operation and we're very hands-on," Buholzer says. "We like to spend more time in the plant than the office."

The Buholzer family first became involved with the company when Buholzer's grandfather was hired as a cheesemaker at the local co-op in 1925. Later, Buholzer's father, Alvin, was hired as a cheesemaker there. In 1970, the family formed a corporation and in 1972 bought the assets of the co-op to make it a family-owned, proprietary plant. Over the years, the plant has transitioned to different types of cheeses according to market demand, Buholzer says.

Today, the company is run by Ron Buholzer and his brothers, Steve and Dave. Also actively involved in the business are Ron's son, Matt, and Steve's son, Adam.

The family, which attributes its strong start in the business to parents Alvin and Rosa Buholzer, is excited about the growth of the company.

While the business has been doing well and could have continued doing well without the addition, the family felt it was time to expand.

"We could not make any more cheese in the physical confines of the existing plant," Buholzer says. "Our growth potential was zero.

"Sooner or later you have to move forward or get left behind," he adds.

With a larger facility, there also is the possibility of trying some other cheeses once again.

"We haven't had a chance to look at other potential cheeses but now we're going to," he says.

Additional attention also is being shifted to the marketing arena. With most of the cheese the company produces going into foodservice, Buholzer would like to see Klondike expand its retail share of the market.

"It's something we've never worked really hard on until this point because production limited us," he says. "We think it's probably money well-spent to try to build a well-known retail brand."

While the company has participated in some trade shows and in-store demos and has done some couponing, much of the business growth up until now has been through word-of-mouth, Buholzer says.

Klondike plans to continue using marketing tools such as word-of-mouth and demonstrations, but also hopes to put additional emphasis on marketing when Steve Buholzer's daughter, Melissa, joins the team later this year to focus on that end of the business. In the meantime, the company is about to roll out its new Odyssey label designed by a local Monroe firm, TW Design.

The new foil, four-color label, with different colors for the different cheeses, gives the company a more "modern" look and is designed to catch the consumer's eye, Buholzer says.

Buholzer hopes the label soon will be found in a broader cross-section of stores across the country. Right now, the company's strongest retail market is in the West. Buholzer especially hopes to grow the company's retail presence in the East, where the company has some foodservice sales.

"We're pretty well national, but we're not in every state," Buholzer explains.

"Hopefully in business down cycles a strong retail brand will help carry us through the valleys," he adds.

Not that the company will be placing less attention on the foodservice side of the business.

"We want to grow all segments of our business," he says.

CMN