2024 Lifetime Achievement Award Winners: Allison Hooper and Bob Reese Vermont Creamery

When Allison Hooper and Bob Reese began working together in 1984, there were only a handful of goat cheese producers in the entire country.

Now 40 years later, the company they built together, Vermont Creamery, has become widely known as one of the foremost makers of fresh goat cheese, along with cultured butter and other dairy products.

Hooper and Reese were both working at the Vermont Agency of Agriculture in 1984 when an opportunity came up to procure goat milk cheese for a recipe at an agency dinner. Hooper, who had previously spent a year working on a dairy farm in France and was at the time also working at a dairy farm in Vermont in addition to working as an intern at the agency, offered to make some goat cheese for the dinner. Some chefs in attendance took notice, and the rest is history.

“It was really an improbable success,” said Hooper. “Just meeting each other was rather serendipitous. We didn't really know each other very well, but I think that we each recognized the other person brought something to the table, and we latched on to that.”

Reese, who had just received his MBA and was active promoting small Vermont food businesses, had the right contacts and business skills, and Hooper provided the cheesemaking know-how. They launched their business together—an idea suggested by Reese’s wife—and began supplying their products directly to consumers and local chefs. Many of those chefs, who quickly realized that the quality of their cheese was on a par with what they were obtaining from France, were instrumental in the company’s early growth.

“We really have to thank those chefs for embracing it at the beginning,” said Reese, who noted that most retailers at that time carried very little in the way of imported or artisanal cheese.

The company did supply some natural and health-food stores, but the specialty cheese industry was not yet mainstream enough for the major grocery chains. This was just as well for Hooper and Reese, who were facing plenty of challenges trying to secure enough goat milk for the demand they had, while navigating the complexities of supply and demand in what was essentially a brand-new industry for the country.

As consumers became more interested in specialty foods, however, and discovered that American cheese could compete on quality with European varieties, the demand from larger grocery chains picked up. Hooper and Reese both recalled attending Fancy Food Shows in the early years of their company when they received more interest than they could accommodate, given their production capacity at the time.

“We received some pretty large orders,” said Reese. “We wanted the business, but we didn’t want to over-promise and under-deliver.”

Luckily, he said some wholesalers and distributors were willing to work with the company and agreed to take whatever product the fledgling cheese company could produce.

The company expanded its production capacity over the years, and Hooper continued to innovate with unique, high-quality, and award-winning products. As consumer interest in specialty foods, and goat cheese in particular, has grown over the years, Hooper said it’s been gratifying to see these products become more widely available.

“I never would have thought that you could go into a supermarket and see not just one brand of fresh goat cheese, but three or four,” she said. “Now there are a lot of choices, and of course, that's great for consumers. It's a very, very competitive market now.”

As much as it is known for its high-quality and innovative product varieties, Vermont Creamery has also long had a reputation for its high operating standards. It has always focused on recruiting and developing talented employees, and both Hooper and Reese credited their workers for much of their success.

It became certified as a B Corp in 2014, after already setting a high bar for its management and employment practices, which included profit sharing and an open-book management style.

“We wanted to establish that sort of ethos so that it would endure beyond Bob and me,” said Hooper. “It was really part of our legacy that we would continue to invest in people and community and do right by the environment.”

Hooper and Reese sold the company to farmer-owned dairy cooperative Land O’Lakes in 2017.