Alise Sjostrom has dreamed of owning a creamery since high school. Today she, her husband Lucas, and parents Jerry and Linda Jennisen (pictured above, right) are making that dream a reality.
Alise Sjostrom visited a creamery for the first time as a high school sophomore; she came home and said, “Dad, this is what I am going to do with my life.”
His response, “Keep working towards it.”
She did. In spring 2014, she and husband Lucas expect to begin production at their artisan cheese making plant in Brooten, Minn. Their business is called Redhead Creamery, after the predominant hair color of Alise and her sisters.
“Our facility will turn out 60,000 pounds of cheese a year, a combination of fresh cheddar cheese curds and aged cheddar cheese,” explains Alise. “It’s very exciting. And it’s kind of scary. We know exactly how much we have to sell to keep this thing going.”
They’ll make their product distinct with their own spice rub formulations. Eventually, they will also produce washed rind cheese varieties like Brie.
You couldn’t come up with a better place to launch a dream to be a cheesemaker—Alise grew up on her parents’ dairy farm. Jerry and Linda Jennisen own Jer-Lindy Farms, which has 170 cows and just over 200 acres of crops, allowing them to feed the herd with their own land. The cheese plant will be just 150 feet from the Jer-Lindy dairy barn.
In college, Alise continued to share her dream with all the important people in her life. As a freshman, Alise ran for Princess Kay of the Milky Way, the contest to represent the dairy industry, and suddenly signs popped up all over Stearns County, reading “Cheese Alise!”
“That was right when we started dating,” explains Lucas. “I barely knew this girl, but the whole county knew that she was ‘Cheese Alise’ and knew that she had this dream. At the time, I told her ‘It’s a great dream, but don’t get your heart set on it.’”
But then he watched her really go after it. She graduated with a dairy food quality degree and went to work at Grafton Village Cheese, a highly renowned American cheddar maker in Vermont. When Alise and Lucas moved to Wisconsin—he pursued his career in communications at Hoard’s Dairyman: “The National Dairy Farm Magazine” — she worked at Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese, and while working there, completed a certificate with the Vermont Institute for
Artisan Cheese.
“She’s well on her way to becoming a top dog in the cheese world,” enthuses Lucas. “The cheese plant is our investment for the future.”