{"id":45940,"date":"2023-06-28T20:22:49","date_gmt":"2023-06-29T00:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/?p=45940"},"modified":"2023-09-19T15:11:48","modified_gmt":"2023-09-19T19:11:48","slug":"stirring-the-curd-what-does-sustainability-look-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/stirring-the-curd-what-does-sustainability-look-like\/","title":{"rendered":"Stirring the Curd: What Does Sustainability Look Like?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sustainability <\/strong>is a multifaceted concept. In business, it can refer to environmental practices, financial status, or labor supply\u2014 among other things. For this installment of Stirring the Curd, we spoke to two industry leaders to learn how they view and prioritize sustainability in their businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarah Hoffmann is the owner and founder of Green Dirt Farm<\/a> in Weston, Missouri. She started the farm in 2002 and produced her first commercial batch of cheese in 2008. Since then, Green Dirt Farm has gone on to win numerous awards for its sheep\u2019s milk cheese and now also operates a caf\u00e9 and cheese shop.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For us, environmental sustainability is foundational for this farm, and it really was one of the most important values I started with. When I started the plan for the business, that was my number one goal: to create a dairy farm that took those values of environmental sustainability extremely seriously, and that we would do everything we could to create a farm that lived by those values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twenty years on, we have come to realize that we must also be economically sustainable to make a difference, so that\u2019s a goal of ours. I like to say that we\u2019re not only for profit, but we must have profit to make a difference. We must have a farm system that other people can emulate, and that can actually pave the way to some real, lasting change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I say that, I\u2019m sure you recognize that I am saying we are not yet economically sustainable. But we believe we can get there, and we believe we know the path to get there. We need to capture some of the margins that our wholesalers and distributors are getting. And that is what has driven us, apart from the fact that it\u2019s a fun and creative idea, to open a restaurant. We recognize we need to be getting more of that profit margin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It almost goes without saying, but environmental stability is baked in. It is part of our DNA; we are not going to change that. We have all our processes in place to make that part of everything we do and part of our ethos and culture. But it\u2019s the economic sustainability that is the biggest challenge for us to do within the parameters of our environmental practices. It\u2019s our biggest hurdle, really. So we focus on that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We do have additional labor costs and additional feed costs, and there are times when your stomach drops when you see the price of something that you have to pay for because you have this standard that you don\u2019t want to set aside. We recognize that we have to pay people better because it\u2019s the right thing to do, but also because we need to be competitive. And I think it\u2019s the right thing to do, but it\u2019s economically difficult and it really strains what we\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People either think that we\u2019re totally crazy, or they think that we\u2019re somehow raking in the dough. They see that we keep growing and think that we\u2019re doing phenomenally well, and that\u2019s not true. It\u2019s really, really challenging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kendall Antonelli is co-owner and founder\u2014along with her husband, John Antonelli\u2014of Antonelli\u2019s Cheese Shop<\/a> in Austin, Texas. Since opening its doors in 2010, Antonelli\u2019s has grown from a local cheese shop to include an event space, a national e-commerce platform, and a wholesale distribution program.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I think of sustainability right now, I think of the labor force. Do we have regular, good people who will show up each day? I think of the financials and pivoting out of this pandemic, trying to identify the best places of our business to lean into and which ones to cut\u2014always with the goal of being more intentional about environmental sustainability while staying committed to who we source from, how we source, and our operational procedures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we started out, sustainability really meant environmental sustainability, people\u2019s land practices and really looking at the \u201cgreen\u201d aspect of sustainability. We\u2019ve found that to contribute to environmental sustainability (and hopefully regeneration in some cases!), we must first and foremost be a sustainable business. We can\u2019t achieve all that we want to accomplish if we aren\u2019t open or don\u2019t have passionate and reliable team members who believe in our mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That means there are times when we\u2019ve had to prioritize keeping the doors open and the lights on or rebuilding team culture. In today\u2019s shifting labor market, one of our main focuses is on attracting and retaining talent. We realized that if we don\u2019t have the team, we can\u2019t do the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To that end, our efforts have been put toward a better quality of life for our team members. That meant offering paid vacation and sick time early on in our business when we couldn\u2019t afford it. That gave way to offering paid health and dental insurance, despite not having the profits to back it up. But we\u2019ve known those were the right decisions, and that, if we couldn\u2019t take care of our people\u2019s basic needs, it wasn\u2019t worth being in business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after the pandemic started, we launched an employment assistance program that offers free mental health services and physical health advice. And just this week, our director of operations, Nicholas Kadrlik, proposed and launched unlimited PTO for our salaried employees. Again, we\u2019ve got a ways to go, but we keep pushing the needle forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think we have a lot of questions to answer and challenges to figure out in the American artisanal cheese industry about how we make it financially sustainable, both for operators and for employees. Fortunately, there are new people coming in with innovative ideas who can maybe figure out a way to do it differently. In the meantime, we\u2019ll keep the hope and dream alive as long as we can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We spoke to two industry leaders to ask them what sustainability means to them. Sustainability is a multifaceted concept. In business, it can refer to environmental practices, financial status, or labor supply\u2014 among other things. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":114,"featured_media":46172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[34131],"tags":[3600,2871,3742,1870,25241,4169,34132,21930],"coauthors":[33619],"class_list":["post-45940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stirring-the-curd","tag-antonellis-cheese-shop","tag-antonellis-cheese","tag-green-dirt-farm","tag-green-dirt-farms","tag-kendall-antonelli","tag-sarah-hoffmann","tag-stirring-the-curd","tag-sustainability"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStirring the Curd: What Does Sustainability Look Like? - culture: the word on cheese<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/stirring-the-curd-what-does-sustainability-look-like\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Stirring the Curd: What Does Sustainability Look Like?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We spoke to two industry leaders to ask them what sustainability means to them. 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