MILKY WAY

MAT-SU — For the CEO of Matanuska Creamery, seeing a student sip local milk from a half-pint carton in a school cafeteria is déja vu. But it’s a lot more than that, too.

This is the first school year since about 2001 that Mat-Su Borough School District students will drink milk from Alaska cows, and the first time in decades that the students will drink milk only from cows that are raised in their own area.

Olson, who was raised on a farm in Wasilla, grew up drinking Matanuska Maid milk at school. Now, the milk comes from Matanuska Creamery.

Packed in half-pints, there is 1 percent Matanuska Creamery white milk or fat-free chocolate. So far, the chocolate is edging out the white in popularity, Olson said. The chocolate recipe uses sugar, not high-fructose corn syrup, she noted.

“I’m kind of returning to my roots in a way — except for the chocolate part,” Olson said. Only white milk was served back in the late ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s.

Matanuska Creamery won the milk contract in late June, and scrambled to be ready for the first day of school in August.

“We didn’t have the machine or the cartoons or even the artwork,” Olson said.

When the time came, Matanuska Creamery staff was delivering 32,000 half-pints to core schools and to the Sgt. Kurtis Arcala Nutrition Center for distribution to other buildings.

That’s about 2,000 gallons of milk every four days.

It wasn’t without glitches, Olson conceded. There were some leaky cartoons — it turns out half pints must be packed in the square crates in a very specific manner — and some cooler issues for the chocolate milk on both ends of the supply chain. Olson said the staff at the school nutrition center has been willing to help work out snags.

“The school district has been very patient with us,” Olson said.

The school milk used to be shipped in by barge from Washington state, according to Chris Johnson, nutrition service supervisor at the district’s nutrition center. There were times when there were issues with that system, too, he said, with the milk traveling three and a half days to get here.

“If you had any problems, it could be a nightmare,” Johnson said.

Now the milk goes from cows to kids in as little as a day.

It’s still early in the school year, Johnson said, and he cannot say yet if the local milk is impacting the students’ lunch choices. He’s had both compliments and complaints about the milk.

For Matanuska Creamery, the school contract means it has a safety net of income as it continues to evolve to fill the void in Alaska left by the closing of the state-owned Matanuska Maid dairy in late 2007.

“It was a big help to us to get the contract,” Olson said. “It puts a floor under the company for nine months out of the year, and we appreciate it.”

Olson said a winter drop in production won’t affect the students’ supply of fresh milk: “We’re going to fill the contract first.”

Milk production goes up and consumption goes down in the summer months, Olson said, and this contract doesn’t help balance that equation, but that’s where the creamery’s production of cheese balances supply and demand.

Kyle Beus, one of the other Matanuska Creamery partners, is concentrating his efforts on developing two new cheese varieties. One will be a pepper Jack. The creamery also sells cheddar and block mozzarella.

The cream skimmed from the kids’ milk will provide plenty of base for the creamery’s many flavors of ice cream. Olson said there is also a demand for cream from Anchorage restaurants.

Olson said all of the pieces together help make it possible for Alaska to have a creamery and a dairy industry again, even though competing with Lower 48 dairies with their subsidized pricing in grocery stores means Matanuska Creamery must rely on people who prefer to buy local milk for its freshness and taste.

While Alaska has regulations on the books that require state-funded entities to give Alaska businesses a 7 percent bidding preference, because the school lunch program is all federally funded, those rules are not applied.

Matanuska Creamery underbid its competitors without any special consideration.

“The fact that we won the bid without any help from any government (subsidy), it shows within a fair and square market, we can compete,” Olson said.

While successful contracts like these could mean the Alaska dairy industry could grow in coming years, Olson said both she and the dairy farmers are cautious.

“If slowly the market were built back up, the farmers will build up (their herds) as well,” she said.

Johnson said both he and district officials are hoping the arrangement works.

“We all want Matansuka Creamery to be successful,” he said. “My hope as an Alaskan is to help increase demand for local milk that will in turn increase the size of dairies in the state and in turn increase our local food supply.”

It’s all part of the district’s efforts to add more locally produced food, like tortilla chips from Taco Loco and an Alaska-made salmon wrap. They’d be using more local produce this year if the weather hadn’t interfered, Johnson said.

“We’re trying to figure out ways to make it work,” Johnson said