For nearly a century, Turner’s Dairy has operated in the highly competitive dairy industry. Founded in 1930, the Pennsylvania-based company has remained family-owned for four generations. Longevity alone does not explain its staying power. What stands out is how the company continues to adapt its business and marketing strategy while maintaining its regional identity.
Strategic Marketing Lessons from a Fourth-Generation Dairy Business
Steve Turner, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, represents the fourth generation of the family to work in the business. His career path reflects how many leaders in family companies develop their skills. Turner began in outside sales, managing a territory around Pittsburgh, before moving into marketing and eventually overseeing sales, marketing, and customer service.
His transition revealed how often marketing is misunderstood in growing companies. Reflecting on the experience, he said, “moving into marketing, I would say I was definitely in over my head for a little while with that.” He also addressed a common misconception: “Everybody thinks it’s easy and everybody thinks they can do it.” For businesses in food and agriculture, marketing often becomes synonymous with social media. In practice, it plays a much broader role in positioning products, guiding innovation, and supporting sales.
Brand Building Through Merchandise and Limited Releases
Turner’s Dairy has also embraced unconventional marketing tools. One example is branded merchandise. The company does not treat merch as a retail business but as a brand-building strategy. As Turner explained, “we’re really not in the business of selling t-shirts, but it’s a great marketing tool for us.” When customers buy branded items from a company known primarily for milk and beverages, they become visible brand advocates.
Another strategy involves limited-time product releases. The company regularly introduces seasonal flavored milks that generate excitement and encourage trial. These launches require careful planning and carry some risk, but they help keep the brand relevant in a category that rarely changes.
Diversification and Partnerships in a Changing Dairy Industry
Like many dairy businesses, Turner’s Dairy has adapted to changes in the fluid milk market. The company diversified decades ago by producing iced tea and other beverages, which now account for a significant portion of its sales. Strategic partnerships have also helped the company expand its reach and connect with new audiences.
For a company approaching its hundredth year, the lesson is clear. Longevity requires more than tradition. As Turner noted, “what worked for the last 96 years probably isn’t going to get us 96 years from now.” Businesses that endure combine heritage with a willingness to test new ideas and evolve with their market.
Transcript
This transcript has been edited from its original form to support readability.
Maureen Ballatori: I’m Maureen Ballatori and this is Spilled Salt, a podcast on the thrills and spills from the food, beverage and agriculture industries.
Today’s guest is Steve Turner. Steve is VP of Sales and Marketing at Turner Dairy Farms. He’s also a fourth-generation family member from Turner’s Dairy. They have been a fixture of the Pennsylvania agriculture scene since the company was founded in 1930. So we’re looking at almost a hundred years here.
Family owned and operated since its inception, Turner’s is committed to serving their neighbors the highest quality, best tasting beverages and fresh dairy. Turner’s believes there’s nothing more important than the quality and commitment to diligent labor and the value of connecting each and every one of their neighbors.
I just love when a company shows their shared values in their descriptive language like that. And not only do they talk the talk, but they walk the walk.
We [at Agency 29] had the pleasure of working with Turner Dairy to overhaul their website a couple years ago. Just lovely people. That’s how I learned about the brand. Some of what we talk about today on the episode is some of what makes them special, not only in their approach to brand building, which is incredibly strong. You can tell by the way that Steve talks about their approach that it truly permeates everything that they do but also their business mind and how they have taken on some strategic acquisitions and their approach to limited time offers and drops for the business have been really quite brilliant. I hope you enjoy it. Enjoy the conversation.
Maureen: Hey there, Steve, how are you?
Steve Turner: Doing great. How are you doing, Maureen?
Maureen: I’m good. Thanks so much for joining me for the pod today. I’m so excited to chat with you.
Steve: Absolutely, glad to do it. Looking forward to it.
Maureen: Love it. Awesome. So you are fourth generation at Turner’s?
Steve: Yes, my great-grandfather started the business in 1930.
Maureen: And have you always wanted to work on the farm?
Steve: Yes and no. I mean, I did when I was in high school and college and all that kind of stuff.
I actually went to college initially for engineering and then decided… Actually I had a professor my freshman year. She was a communications professor and, to make a long story short, her husband’s family owned a business that’s actually one of our customers.
So when she found that out, she started talking to me about that and the relationship between her family and ours. And that really made me think about wanting to join the business.
Plus I got to Calculus 2 and realized it really wasn’t all that much fun. So I decided that business would be a lot more fun and interesting. Plus really the value of connections and people, relationships, stuff like that, was really important.
Maureen: Yes. Tell me a little bit about your sort of role post-graduation. You leave college, you go back to the farm. What were your initial responsibilities? And you are now VP of sales and marketing. I imagine that there has been some evolution there too, in terms of what you’re responsible for now. So talk about that a little bit.
Steve: Yes. So after school, I graduated with just a general business degree. And again, kind of liking the relationship side of things, I [became] an outside sales rep. I started in that, managing a territory of customers near Pittsburgh. I think I was South and East of the city. I did that for four or five years and transitioned into a marketing role that oversaw marketing and customer service, and then transitioned just in the last year and a half or so to oversee all sales, marketing, and customer service.
Maureen: There’s so much value in those roles overlapping and in some cases, there’s sort of right brain, left brain responsibilities in some ways, right? Whereas sales is very relationship driven and being outgoing and that sort of stuff, whereas marketing is more creative and that sort of thing.
We see a lot with the companies that we work with that sometimes a challenge is sales and marketing not efficiently being able to sort of one hand talk to the other, right? So what does that look like for you, especially because you’re not the only one doing sales. And so, you know, how do you kind of wear both of those hats and collaborate with the teams so that everybody gets it?
Steve: Yes, so I’d say moving into marketing, would say I was definitely in over my head for a little while with that, that kind of like differences and like, I mean, what you hear, like in college and stuff, you hear about marketing is like, it’s not what it is in reality. From a design standpoint, but also from a strategy and higher level thinking as well to some degree a misconception that it’s more or less social media. Everybody thinks it’s easy and everybody thinks they can do it. But I guess to more directly answer your question, we certainly have those challenges as well.
So we sell primarily B2B and our marketing is primarily B2C. There is that disconnect. Marketing does definitely support sales with sales materials in more kind of indirect ways rather than driving more traditional leads, if that makes sense. Yes, so do certainly work hand in hand but also down pretty different paths as well.
Maureen: I’m sure you probably knew I was going to circle back to this. You just mentioned that when you started marketing, you felt like you were in over your head a little bit and that there was this belief, that everybody thinks that it’s simple and it’s social media. Talk to me about that. What gave you a different frame of mind? How did you have to start thinking about it differently? How did you get up to speed on the strategy side of the house in particular?
Steve: Yes, we’ve always had a very small marketing department. At that point, I was the only marketing person. Now there’s our marketing manager and a social media person as well.
It was truthfully a lot of figuring it out on my own and also going to seminars or different education pieces. So I’m not sure if you’re familiar with St. Joe’s University in Philadelphia, but they have a really great food marketing program. So I haven’t gone through their formal program, but they have some more informal programs that I’ve done. And at Cornell, I did an online course for marketing strategy as well. So a lot of figuring it out as well as using some other resources like that.
Maureen: Got it.
Yes. And so for other folks who are listening, who are trying to get an understanding, what specific courses were beneficial for you? If you had to advise somebody else who was about to follow the same path as you, what direction would you send them in? Do you think that the formal education was helpful or is it more of a, it kind of just got to jump in and do it?
Steve: I mean, I think you kind of have to be a person that’s going to just jump in and do it and figure it out and put in the work. I think what probably would have been more valuable for me and just kind of the way I work and learn is to have more of a mentor that was like an expert in those fields. It probably truthfully would have been probably more valuable to me. Not that the education was bad, that’s what was available where I jumped in. Yes, I think it’s kind of both of those things. I think having a lot of grit is important and being able to roll up your sleeves and get things done.
Maureen: Totally agree. I think it’s an excellent life skill. I’m working on teaching that to my kids. I really think that Turner’s has some of the best merch and brand partnerships. So I want to talk about some of those here. I think also speaking of creativity and the creativity that you guys bring to the table, I think that you do that incredibly well too.
Talk to me a little bit about your philosophy on merch and brand partnerships.
Steve: Yes, so our merch started like 2019, 2020, somewhere in that ballpark. Looking back, we have this iconic orange Turner’s t-shirt that you could only ever get if you knew somebody. You had to know somebody that worked here in order to get one or you had to work here yourself.
Maureen: It was coveted? Like it was something that everybody wanted? Cool.
Steve: Yes. Every time we do a social media giveaway for one, people get crazy over it. It’s just our brand. People in Pittsburgh are kind of obsessed with Turner’s. It has a little bit of a cult following in Pittsburgh. People in Pittsburgh live and die by it.
Maureen: Why?
Steve: So now granted we’ve still never sold that t-shirt, but we did some other partnerships as well, some one-off kind of things, limited edition merch that I think also helped transition to being able to have both everyday regular merch plus the other limited edition drops that we’ve done. Such as, different artist series where we partnered with local artists in the city, as well as just coming up with unique things ourselves. I think unique and hard to get things are really key for us, because we’re really not in the business of selling t-shirts, but it’s a great marketing tool for us.
So we don’t really want to have like a ton of stuff just sitting around. So having things that are in and out, limited drops, kind of drives a sense of urgency there as well. And then with the partnerships we’ve done, yes.
Maureen: I’m going to pause you right there. So before we go to partnerships, I know I just asked you a double question, but you just spurred a bunch of questions about merch. So I want to hold there for a minute before we go to partnerships, because you made a point that I think is critical for brands to understand that you are not selling merch to be a merch company, right? You’re not in the business of t-shirts, but selling merch.
And especially when you’re building on what you started this off with, you said there was this iconic orange t-shirt that our community just loved and wanted because we’ve got this really strong following. Strong merch contributes to brand building and that sort of thing where it’s the cool thing to wear, it’s a comfortable thing to wear and so I’m going to wear it more often. You’re building this whole army of brand advocates who are walking billboards. Right? Has that been your philosophy and is like one of the reasons why you keep it going or has it been more so about the fun of it and the creativity of it?
Steve: More so on the former, the opportunity for the marketing value of it. I do think it definitely drives interest as well and keeps people going to our social media, to our website, but definitely more the former and driving that marketing message, the billboards out there. If people care enough about your brand when you’re not a merch brand. If they care enough about your brand to buy a t-shirt, buy a hat, buy whatever it is, like they’re an advocate, they’re an ambassador.
Maureen: Totally agree. Okay, thank you for sticking there with me. Okay, now brand partnerships. Let’s talk about that.
Steve: Yes, so those have been primarily on the product side. So whether that’s a product we make or a product that the partner makes, we’ve done a bunch of them over the years.
To back up one step, we’ve done a lot of limited edition flavored milk. Right now we have chocolate peanut butter milk and we’re about to make cookies and cream. So a lot of those partnerships have centered around that concept and those products specifically.
We did a collaboration with Grist House, a local craft brewery. So when we had, for example, brownie batter milk, they made a brownie batter stout using our same branding, packaging. And then whenever people would go and buy a brownie batter stout, they would get a pint of brownie batter milk along with that. So that was one of the first big things.
That got us into a different part of the market, the alcohol market. That’s traditionally a lot more exciting than milk, right? Nobody thinks milk is very exciting by and large. So that kind of gets us into a different audience there.
Some partnerships we’ve done the other way, a regional restaurant brand, Eat ‘N Park, so they’re the Smiley Cookie. We’ve done a Smiley Cookie flavored milk with them.
So again, bringing their audience to us as well as our audience to them. These partnerships have been important for a lot of those reasons, but we also have a, again, we have a small team and a pretty small marketing budget, so we don’t have the millions of dollars that big companies do. We have to find ways to be creative to stay in the conversation with people to expand our audience by partnering with like-minded brands to kind of branch that out a little bit.
And then the biggest one that we did, I think it was three, three or four years ago now, we partnered with Iron City Pittsburgh Brewing to make a hard iced tea product, which was definitely the biggest, I would say, in terms of reach and actual sales as well. That’s a product that we were literally working on for, I think, five years before we got it right and brought it to market. So that was really exciting for us and definitely the biggest for sure.
Maureen: So you are not the only dairy that does other beverages, right? Like tea, et cetera. Why is that? Why is it common for a dairy producer to do other beverages, lemonade, iced tea, that sort of thing?
Steve: So I think it’s more common in this region of the US than others. One, so the fluid milk industry has been declining for at least, yes, 10, 20 years easily.
Maureen: Last 10 plus years.
Steve: It’s also a lower margin product than iced tea drinks, things like that. So we actually started it in the 70s making iced tea. We made juice before that, but started making our iced tea line in the 70s. And that was really…
It was kind of conceived out of a need that like steelworkers in Pittsburgh needed or wanted a cold drink while they’re working in the steel mills. And we actually started it as just a summertime thing. Just did it for a few months out of the year. And it organically grew.
Yes, so it’s diversification, it’s new products. We actually sell about 50-50 milk and iced tea or drinks. And that’s not normal, like in other parts of the country. Pennsylvania in particular has a lot of that, and New York has quite a bit of that as well.
Maureen: That’s awesome.
Steve: And for whatever reason, people in Pittsburgh drink a lot of iced tea compared to other regions. Whenever we get a new category manager for a national C-store chain, they look at the planogram sets and basically be like, what the hell is all this iced tea doing in here? And then they look at the numbers and they’re like, it’s recent?
Maureen: It’s moving. Yes.
Steve: So we, in Pittsburgh, in the cold vault, it’s about, iced tea is about double what it is in other regions. Even if you just go to Ohio, we just, for whatever reason, we just drink a lot of iced tea here in Pittsburgh.
Maureen: Got it. Know your market, right? So you’ve been doing iced tea since the 70s. And so help me understand why this hard iced tea partnership with Iron City took five years.
Steve: So that was really just like product formulations. I guess we did like the Grist House partnerships, but those were very small scale things. This we knew needed to find one right partner. Like in that sweet spot, it couldn’t be a craft brewer because there’s just no way they could keep up with the volume and the AB in-dev would, they’d never be interested in it, not enough volume for them. So one finding the right partner, Iron City was in the process of actually building their own plant in Pittsburgh at that time. So it kind of fit a lot of those things, but actually formulating the product was a lot more difficult than we expected.
We initially just started trying to mix our iced tea in with the beer, but all the iced tea would fall out into the bottom and you’d get like this nasty brown sludgy stuff at the bottom. It took a lot, figuring out how to capture that flavor without the inconsistency in the product. So it took a lot longer than we expected.
Maureen: Yes, but but I’ve had a number of conversations with folks on this podcast about the idea of what you’re talking about with what I call like a sweet spot partnership, right? That they couldn’t be too small, but they couldn’t be too big in order for you guys to be aligned with sort of a mutual. Need right for what made sense for both of you.
Steve: Absolutely. They’re also a big Pittsburgh brand as well. I think they’ve been around since the 1860s, something to that effect. So it also made a lot of sense from a brand perspective as well as the scale perspective as well.
Maureen: Yes, that makes sense. Before we move on from merch, talk to us about the mini crates. Talk about those.
Steve: I wish I had props with me so I could show all this stuff. Yes, so that one, that was also a really fun one. Our cartons of ice tea are squares, naturally, right? And then we also have a quart of ice tea that is also like a mini gallon, essentially.
So those don’t fit in cup holders in your cars. and especially the carton. Its open top can wobble around and spill all the time. So this is going back, I actually don’t even know how many years. We were trying to find that sweet spot, getting an injection mold made is very cost prohibitive for something of this scale.
I think at that point, 3D printing wasn’t even a thing really, especially at a consumer level. So it was put on the shelf for a long time. And then we actually had somebody who has a 3D printing business in Eastern PA to reach out to us just randomly and say, hey, I could 3D print these for you.
Maureen: How did the 3D printing companies say I could make them? You’d already been talking about the idea of these little crates? And could you explain to people what they are?
Steve: Do you mind if I just get one real quick? So imagine like a cup holder, or a cup holder attachment, I guess, that you would stick down into your cup holder. It’s got like that round base to fit down in there. And then from up, from there it goes up and makes a square milk crate, essentially. So you can put your carton of iced tea in it.
Maureen: Well, not everybody’s going to watch. Some people only listen.
Steve: So we, again, it’s something we’d thought about, but the little bit we looked into it, getting a mold made was just way too expensive for the amount we expected to sell. We, again, didn’t really think much about it. And then this guy reaches out to us. I think he had made something kind of similar for somebody else, like a cup holder, like 3D printed a cup holder in a square shape.
So, he sent us a couple of those and reached out and like, mean, good for him on the cold call. He nailed it. Right in the wheelhouse. were like, that looks great, but could you make it look like a milk crate on top? These things will.
Maureen: Yes, got it. So it was a perfect storm of something that you had had in your mind. And he reached out and said, hey, if you have any interest, I’ve made this thing and you put two and two together. Yes. And so then you start talking about it online and a ton of people are super interested in it, right?
Steve: Right. Yes. So going back to the unique, interesting, things that people don’t expect. We limited [the run] the first time we did them, we did a pre-sale and it was like, you have to order them within this week or two weeks or whatever it was to, again, one drives some urgency, but again, not being in the merch business. We didn’t want to buy 5,000 and sell 20 because that’d be bad.
But then it also took a long time to 3D print. I think it was like a thousand of them or 1500 at the time. like, said people were mad at us because we were too far behind on orders. So it kind of turned into a thing.
Maureen: But you had a ton of interest, Like people, everybody wanted them. They’re adorable, too. So anybody who’s listening or you can go to the Turner’s website and are they still on the website? Yes. And you’ll look at the merch page and you’ll find them there.
Steve: Yes. So the first thing.
Yes. So there is a blast. The first year we did them just as a, for the pint cartons. The next year we added the court ones. And I think that same year we did, I was like doing fun April Fools Day stuff on social media. So we actually got the guy to print one that a gallon could fit in. And it’s like, we did this fake infomercial where I spilled a gallon of tea in my car and people went nuts over it.
Maureen: Yes, I love it so much. I also love the energy that a new generation can bring to a business is really exciting to me. Right. And you’re showing the evidence of that by pursuing the long tail of this sort of stuff with the April Fools joke. You went through all the trouble to make this hilarious infomercial that people loved.
That sort of surprise and delight is exactly what consumers want to engage with. Even though you mentioned that at first marketing wasn’t really your bag, you clearly got up to speed because that sort of stuff makes sticky customers. It’s the kind of thing that people want to engage with. It builds strong brands.
So kudos to you and your team on that stuff. I think it’s awesome.
Before we move on to, cause I want to talk about BL here next, but, I think also one of the super cool things that you told me about a couple of years ago when we had dinner somewhere in upstate New York after the, or before the NEDBIC summit, was Picklesburg.
What is Picklesburg and what does Turner’s have to do with Picklesburg?
Steve: Thank you. That’s the most insane thing you could ever imagine. It’s an entire food festival in Pittsburgh centered around pickles.
Truthfully, I don’t really like pickles. I don’t think they’re that great. I’m not obsessed with them like people are. I think last year was the 10th year, but they had probably 250,000 people come to this food festival over three days in the city. It’s absolute mayhem.
I think this will be our fourth year, but we decided a few years ago that, since it’s become a pillar of Pittsburgh in the summer, we decided we needed to be a part of it. So the first year we made pickled iced tea and sold that at Picklesburg. Again, just limited just for that. Not really knowing how much we would sell at it. That year we sold, I think, 10,000 pints of pickled iced tea in three days. Then we made pickled lemonade. So yes, just again, trying to keep it fun, interesting.
And like we could have gone and just had iced tea and it probably would have been okay, but having pickled iced tea is that unique thing. It was really cool. People loved it.
Maureen: That’s awesome. And again, speaks to energy, innovation, right? Bringing that sort of thing to the table.
So speaking of innovation, Turner’s recently announced a new kind of partnership with BL brand, Sour Cream, French Onion Dip, and Horseradish.
Was that an acquisition? Okay, so talk about that. What made you want to do that? Talk about the kind of traction that the brand had but primarily like what made you want to bring them in as an acquisition.
Steve: Yes, so it’s a Pittsburgh based company. They were a fourth generation family owned business as well. our partnership actually goes back 50-ish years to the 70s. So they started in, I think it was the north side of Pittsburgh and we’re in the East Hills, but we used to sell them milk and cream to make sour cream.
They used to make our sour cream and then they got out of the manufacturing side of the business, I think 2010, give or take. And so we moved our sour cream into one of our facilities and actually also started making the BL product as well.
And they also had a beverage distribution business. So they would buy and sell and distribute things like that.
So they actually sold that business a year and half, almost two years ago at this point.
Maureen: They sold the distribution side of the business prior, okay.
Steve: Yes. And then we’ve talked to them a couple of times and it didn’t make sense previously, but this time we felt that we had some things in place that we could move forward with it, more operationally from a customer standpoint, since they had sold the distribution part of their business,
It really didn’t make sense to continue the sour cream portion. And it made a lot of sense for us. There are a lot of similarities. We were able to double the number of grocery stores that we’re delivering to now, as the brand on its own made a ton of sense. But getting our foot in the door at 70 more, 80 more grocery stores made a ton of sense.
Maureen: Yes, that’s huge.
Steve: Yes, a long history of partnership over a long period of time. Like my grandpa actually used to deliver tankers of milk down there, my uncle did. We’ve probably known at least three generations of their family. They’ve known three generations of our family. So it’s kind of a cool culmination, I guess, of a long partnership.
Maureen: Yes. And so why did they want to get out of the business? Was it like they had an outgoing generation and no incoming generation that wanted to take over or was it just, you know, that kind of over the years with the changing landscape, they didn’t really want to do it anymore or talk to me about why from their side?
And perhaps that’s an unfair question because you’re not in their heads, right? But I’m always curious about not only the acquisition side of the house, right, which all the reasons that you just explained made a lot of sense, efficiency and operations, right, from the production standpoint, as well as additional doors, right?
And so your ability to have further relationships there. But from the family business side, you know, I’m always curious about why get out. What do you know about that?
Steve: Yes, so I definitely can’t speak to the beverage distribution portion that kind of happened a year and a half before this. I think especially once it got to their business was really just distributing sour cream, French onion dip, horseradish. It didn’t financially make sense really truthfully at that point. So, it made sense to kind of offload that to somebody like us.
Maureen: Yes. Well, I think also from your standpoint, what you spoke about efficiency and that sort of thing. And you made mention of another thing earlier that I think all like ladders up that I want to just connect for listeners is you mentioned the, my word, not yours, but the difficulty of fluid milk.
It’s a really, really challenging industry and you have to have the economies of scale in order to have any hope or prayer of making it work. And there is, I think, immense value in value added. And that’s where there’s a lot of potential and opportunity for traction and you get a longer shelf life and there’s more diversity. Would you agree that the value added side is where you’re going to see more opportunity?
Steve: Absolutely. Those are the growing parts of the dairy industry. And even within fluid milk, the value added fluid milk is growing. But especially cheese, cottage cheese is the hero of the dairy aisle right now. Whereas it was five years ago, nobody ever talked about cottage cheese. Now it’s all everybody can talk about.
And from a consumer standpoint, those products are just more interesting. It’s probably not the right word, there’s more you can do with cheese. You can put it in recipes. You can eat it. You can do whatever with it.
So a professor at St. Joe’s University, he always refers to the dairy case as the cold white tundra of the grocery store. It’s cold, it’s white, and nothing ever changes.
Now in the fluid milk space, we’ve tried to push that envelope with some of those things that we’ve talked about In terms of like conventional white fluid milk, he’s absolutely right, but there’s a lot of areas for growth for opportunity in dairy, including in fluid milk and especially cheese culture and those other categories.
Maureen: Yes, you talked about pushing the envelope and I know that you do a lot of LTOs and you talked about drops on the merch side, but you also have a similar philosophy on the milk side with, like you mentioned, you have a chocolate peanut butter now you’re doing cookies and cream next.
What does that look like for you, especially because it’s something we frequently recommend to clients, but sometimes they can’t wrap their head around. Well, then that’s something that we have to work into the production cycle, right? We’re only selling it for a short period of time.
Tell me about your philosophy around LTOs when it comes to the fluid milk and what’s the perception from the retailer side of the house, especially with your, this is where your sales and marketing hat is a great value to listeners to be able to get that perspective. What’s do the retailers say and like or dislike about the LTOs?
Steve: So from a production standpoint, all those people are right. There’s a lot of challenges to it. One, predicting how much you’re going to sell, how much raw materials you need, the effort that goes into developing flavors, developing packaging. 100 % all of that exists.
10 years ago, 2016 was when we did our first one. Ironically, it was actually chocolate peanut butter. The first time we did it, 10 years ago, we had no idea how much we were going to sell. We just picked a number [and said let’s] see how it goes.
Fortunately and unfortunately, we picked too low of a number the first time we sold. I think we sold 10,000 half gallons of chocolate peanut butter milk in eight days and it created an absolute rat race for consumers and for customers. It was, again, good and bad. It was a mess in both directions. Everybody was calling, panicking, like, where can I get more? All this stuff. So all that to say, we didn’t just figure it out and get it right.
We also had plenty of flavors that were losers. Nobody liked them. We were all sitting around trying them [saying] that’s a good flavor. The worst one we did was gingerbread. We all liked it. We all thought it tasted good, but apparently nobody else did.
Maureen: Fair. The consumer was not here for it. I think that’s the other thing about something like that when you’re going to do specifically a limited run, limited production or creation of anything is that you really are taking a chance and you have to be comfortable with acceptance and rejection and be able to listen.
Steve: I was actually just thinking the exact same thing. You have to be willing, if you’re going to do it, have to be willing to take the risk and understand that not everyone is going to be a winner. I mean, you gotta win more than you lose on them for sure, it’s not going to be worth it.
But absolutely, they’re not all going to be winners. And that’s a risk that we’ve decided we’ve been willing to take because the conventional fluid milk sales decline, we need to do something to drive traffic to our brand, to our stores, and things of that nature.
Maureen: So talk to us about the retailer side. are they, do they love the LTOs or are they challenging to slot in?
Steve: There, again, at first definitely was more challenging. And the bigger the retailer, the more challenging all of it is. That first example of chocolate peanut butter I gave you that we did 10 years ago, one of our biggest customers actually decided they weren’t going to bring it in and then saw the hysteria. It was like, we need to get this. And we’re like, that’s great, but we don’t have any more.
So again, and there is some that every once in a while a retailer will decide they’re not going to bring in. In terms of slotting, we usually just take one of our own facings. It’s like if we have two or three facings of chocolate milk in the store, we’ll cut one of those and turn it into a slot for LTOs. So there’s not a ton of challenge from that perspective.
One of our, I guess, big hurdles that we had to overcome was how far in advance we had to be planning these things. Early on, we were like hand to mouth on it. We were deciding a few months beforehand. Whereas some of these retailers need all of the information for even up to like six months in advance. So we’ve had to extend our planning cycle quite a bit as well.
Maureen: And have you found that the LTOs have had a brand lift across the board? Is an LTO helping to lift, you know, your regular white milk sku?
Steve: We more get a lift on chocolate milk. So it definitely has more translation there and it’s hard to kind of measure at this point, but early on we definitely saw a lift in chocolate milk sales during those periods. And what we found was, let’s say you have a chocolate peanut butter on the shelf and it’s interesting, it’s going to drive some traffic to the door and maybe somebody doesn’t pick up the chocolate peanut butter but they’ll pick up a chocolate milk instead of that.
Maureen: That makes sense. Chocolate and chocolate.
Steve: Chocolate is the absolute winner. Chocolate plus a flavor. Almost always a winner. Anything that’s not chocolate is less certain how it’s going to do.
Maureen: Like gingerbread. Or like pumpkin spice, I would imagine, right? But if it was like a chocolate pumpkin or something like that, you’re saying that if it’s chocolate plus, that’s when it tends to do well. Yes, it makes sense.
Steve: Yes. And we’ve had some chocolate plus that aren’t great. Like we did a chocolate peppermint that was, it was good. It wasn’t great. And we’ve had some non-chocolate flavors that have been really good. Like we did a cinnamon roll milk a few years ago. I mentioned that smiley cookie partnership we did. So there are good non-chocolate flavors. Chocolate’s consistently here and non-chocolate is a step down.
Maureen: Yes, well, and what it’s all about is trial and error, right? And so you just mentioned that if you’re going to do this sort of thing, you have to be comfortable with an element of error, right? As well as success and the best thing that you can do with LTOs and with really anything that you’re going to trial, whether that’s a new product and a new sku that you’re, you know, pushing out into a retail store or a new marketing message or marketing channel or something like that.
You have to be able to go into it in a way that you determine sort of out of the gate what a success looks like and what can I learn from this and evaluate the data. From your experience with LTOs, you can be pretty confident that a chocolate plus is going to move. And it’s a little bit more of a chance if you’re doing something that is not in that vein. And so it just shows the value and importance of evaluation after the fact just as much as it does the opportunity of taking that risk.
Steve: Absolutely. And to your point about what success looks like, our primary goal is marketing and branding with these. They absolutely need to sell and be profitable. Because if they don’t sell, it’s not successful for us or retailers. But the primary objective was definitely marketing and branding, for sure.
Maureen: I love it. Brilliant. For a non-marketer especially, I’m giving heavy, heavy air quotes. You’re right, good point. It’s a team effort, I’m sure.
So last question for you, I always like to get into a little bit of the what’s next. So when you think about all of your product lines, where do you see the most growth in the next three to five years or what do you think the future of the dairy industry holds? Just give us a little bit of insight into what might be next either for Turner’s directly or some thoughts on the industry.
Steve: Yes, so those are definitely big questions we’re wrestling with and trying to figure out as well because the fluid milk industry just continues to consolidate both in terms of supply as well as sales. So we’re very much actively trying to figure out what that looks like.
As I mentioned culture, we make cottage cheese, and we’ve seen huge increases in that in the last few years. So that’s definitely an area we’re looking at as well as value added milk, whether that’s ESL or some other kind of technology.
We’re trying to figure that out. No easy answers. That’s for sure. But we’re definitely very actively trying to figure that out because it’s what worked for the last 96 years probably isn’t going to get us 96 years from now. You just have to be willing to change, look at new things, do new things.
Maureen: Yes, well, you’ve certainly got the right philosophy and the right mindset to be successful for the next 90 plus years with your philosophy on trial and error and diversification of your product line and that sort of thing. So I look forward to continuing to see Turner’s success.
Steve, thanks so much for joining me today. It was great to pull your story out a little bit and learn a little bit more about some of the behind-the-scenes actions. Thanks so much.