Fox Valley Creamery Turns Family Recipes Into a Statewide Brand

The aging room at Fox Valley Creamery holds close to four thousand wheels of cheese at any given time, stacked on wooden shelves in a climate-controlled space that Colette Marchetti still checks by hand most mornings, running a finger along a rind to feel for the texture her grandmother taught her to recognize decades ago. The Appleton company Marchetti now runs as chief executive began as a single small-batch operation her grandmother started in the 1970s, selling cheese curds and cheddar wheels out of a converted dairy barn to neighbors and a handful of local grocers.

Marchetti did not originally plan to take over the family business. She studied food science at a Wisconsin university with an eye toward a career in product development for a larger food company, and spent several years working in quality assurance for a national dairy processor before her grandmother's declining health brought her back to Appleton in 2011. What she found was a beloved but financially fragile operation, still using equipment purchased in the 1980s and selling almost entirely through a single regional distributor.

Modernizing Without Losing the Recipe

Marchetti's first major decision was one that unsettled some of the creamery's longtime staff: she invested in new pasteurization and packaging equipment, financed through a combination of a USDA rural business loan and a bank line of credit, while insisting that the cheese cultures and aging processes her grandmother developed remain untouched. "People who'd worked there for twenty years were nervous I was going to turn it into some sterile factory operation," Marchetti said in an interview at the creamery. "I told them the equipment changes, the recipe doesn't."

That balance became central to the company's growth strategy. Fox Valley Creamery kept its small-batch aging process even as it scaled production, a decision that slowed growth compared to competitors willing to shift toward faster industrial methods, but one Marchetti credits with preserving the flavor profile that built the brand's loyal following in the first place.

From Regional Distributor to Statewide Shelves

The company's breakthrough came in 2018, when Marchetti secured a placement agreement with a major Wisconsin grocery chain after two years of persistent outreach and product sampling at trade shows. Fox Valley Creamery products are now sold in more than 200 stores across Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota, and the company recently began shipping directly to consumers through an online store that Marchetti says has grown into roughly 15 percent of total revenue.

Investing in the Next Generation of Cheesemakers

Marchetti has been vocal about the shortage of skilled cheesemakers entering the industry as older tradespeople retire, and Fox Valley Creamery now partners with a technical college dairy science program to host apprenticeships for students interested in artisan cheesemaking. She has also worked to raise wages for production staff above the regional average, arguing that retaining experienced cheesemakers is essential to maintaining product consistency at a growing scale.

Staying Rooted in the Fox Valley

Despite interest from larger dairy conglomerates, including at least one acquisition offer Marchetti has publicly acknowledged turning down, she has kept the company privately held and headquartered in the same Appleton facility her grandmother built, now expanded three times over. She recently broke ground on a visitor center and small retail shop adjacent to the production facility, hoping to draw tourists off nearby Highway 41 and give the public a closer look at how the cheese is made.

"My grandmother used to say the cheese tells you when it's ready, you just have to listen," Marchetti said, standing near a row of aging cheddar wheels. "That part of the business, I never want to modernize away."