Hoping to please with their CHEESE
BY NIKKI JAMIESON insight magazine
nally started in 1984 by Johann Brewer in Bluffton, Alta.He would later sell the company and equipment to Evert Beyer, a southern Alberta dairy farmer, in 2005. “My dad (Evert) had the dairy farm here, and he had a head concussion at the time,and he wasn’t able to do any of the milking or anything
anymore.There was an advertisement in the Alberta Milk Times, and it basically said ‘Cheese plant for sale’.He answered the ad, and pretty much that’s how the whole thing got started,” said Harvey Beyer, operations manager at Crystal Springs Cheese. Once the new factory was built and the equip- ment was moved to its new home in Lethbridge County, the Beyer family began making cheese. Crystal Springs Cheese became a family business for the Beyers, with Evert being the founder and owner, and his children taking roles within the business as they got older. Jacco oversees the production in the plant, Jocelyn manages the retail store,Theo runs the family dairy farm and Harvey takes care of operations for the plant. “There’s an added interest for us,because we
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actually use our own milk,so we try to produce the very best milk,”said Harvey.“We take the
heese is a family business for those who run Crystal Springs Cheese in Lethbridge County. Crystal Springs Cheese was origi-
milk,we pump it to the cheese plant, and pretty much we do the full cycle with all of our milk, and we actually buy in milk as well,”said Harvey. “We take like raw milk, whatever dairy around here ships out,and we’re selling finished prod- uct out of it.” When the company was purchased,they were also given the recipes from the previous owner, who produced mainly feta cheese and some gouda cheese. Jacco,who would later attend the cheese-making course at the University of Guelph,began making cheddar and gouda cheeses in a smaller vat at the plant, and took them to sell at farmer’s markets.He also began producing cheese curds, and those took off faster than their other cheeses, according to
Harvey.They have also began making yogurt, and expanding into retail. “Farmers' markets is where
we went with (our cheese), it was just kind of a side thing,” said Harvey.“Now we’re launching retail, so eventually we hope to add additional (space) to this store,and we hope to be selling some of our main flavours of cheddars and goudas into grocery stores as well. “Wholesale is really good,
you just have to have a good quality product and you have to have a good price. Retail, for
us,has been more about really focus- ing a lot more on the high quality. We’ve gone com- pletely natural cheeses for all of our retail lines, so our cheese curds are completely natural, there’s no preservatives, it’s a natural curd. It’s a two-week expiry date, that’s how natural it is.” Part of the expansion into retail included opening a retail store onsite in December 2018. Harvey said the store was prompted because they had customers coming in wanting cheese, but they had no setup for it.With the retail store, they decided to open up a restaurant there as well, as Jocelyn studied culinary arts. A big priority for them was being open with
Ken Just Associate
26 - insight magazine june 2019
5217D 50 Ave 403-634-4802
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