Delivery day: Wholesale business helps grow cheese sales

AgriNews will follow Ken Ropp throughout the entire year. Each month, look for updates about the farmer and the decisions he makes on his farm.

NORMAL, Ill. — With over 90% of the business wholesale, nearly every day is delivery day for Ken Ropp.

“I spend a majority of the time on the road. My employees know that if Ken is not on the road, we can’t pay the bills,” said the Ropp Jersey Cheese proprietor.

“The portion of our business that we’ve seen grow is really on the restaurant side. Those that weathered the pandemic, the COVID storm, are putting the pieces back together still. We all are. We’re all consumers.

“We know that this world is not cheap by any means right now. But they know that they can make some money on our product and we’ve got a high-end, good-quality product and that’s a plus for us.”

AgriNews did a ride-along with Ropp on April 2 as he delivered two coolers of cheese curds each to Destihl Restaurant and Destihl Beer Hall and Barrel Room, both in Normal.

Ropp delivers his products Monday through Thursday.

“Monday is our Champaign-Danville run. Tuesdays have become kind of our local run. Then Wednesday and Thursday, depending on where the orders fall in with restaurants, we’ve got a Peoria run and also a Springfield run. I know that this week we’re having to make more curd for Engrained in Springfield,” he said.

“I don’t want the customer to have to be told no, and that’s big for both of us.”

—  Ken Ropp, proprietor, Ropp Jersey Cheese

“We have no curd right now at the farm, and so we’ll make it tomorrow morning and that’ll be curd to go to the restaurant.

“A normal day for me, as long as orders are filled, I’ll leave somewhere between 4 and 4:30 in the morning. If I can, I’ll put two different kinds of runs together, whether that means doing Champaign and then I’ll run up to Fairbury.

“On Monday this week, we did the Champaign run, came back, reloaded and I went up to Acres Inn in Pontiac and then Down at the Farms in Fairbury. It’s just it depends on what kind of day it is and what the weather’s like. Wintertime can be a little trickier, but most for our customers have set time.”

Customer Relations

The success in any business hinges on customer relationships. It’s also a highlight for Ropp in his day-to-day duties.

“The long-term relationships are great. I love going in the backdoors of kitchens and kicking rocks with the guys. It’s just something I’ve always enjoyed. It takes kind of a different attitude. I want to learn what they’re doing. That’s the neat part about the process,” he said.

He visited with Jacob Sartin, Destihl Restaurant and Destihl Beer Hall and Barrel Room senior executive chef, during one of the Normal stops March 2.

Destihl has been a partner with Ropp Jersey Cheese since the brewery and restaurant first opened 17 years ago.

“They literally started brewing at Destihl within 18 months after we opened the doors here and started making cheese. I’ll never forget that first winter,” Ropp said.

“Their little group came out from the pub before they had the new Beer Hall, and they went through everything, they did some choosing, they wanted to try different spices and things like that. It was exciting and new and something for both families. It’s been something big.”

“Ken has been one of our original partners,” Sartin said.

The Destihl locations combined use about 800 pounds of Ropp’s cheese curds each month.

“Obviously, cheese curds are huge sellers for us. It’s probably a top-three item that we sell here. We also buy other cheese from him, as well. He’s been with us since day one,” Sartin said.

“We take the cheese curds. We do a little egg wash and some seasoned bread crumbs, fry them up and people love them.”

The chef said the business tries to support as many local farmers as it can.

“Sometimes, it’s a little bit harder because some of the smaller farms just don’t have the production that they can do it for both places, but for sure when the weather starts changing and we have some opportunity to do some things with the farms, we try to do as much as we can,” he said.

“Ken takes pride in what he does. He’s still delivering and his dad, Ray, actually used to do a lot of the delivering, as well. They’re great people. They care about their product. They care about the chefs and putting out good food to the customers. It’s been a great relationship.”

A key piece of the relationships is the open communication chain to meet the customers’ needs.

“I think that something that’s different for Chef Jacob and myself is if and when we do have problems, like we’ve been changing some spice around, we have that rapport with each other that we can use the term, ‘call a spade a spade,’ and just say, hey, we need some work on this or we need some help here,” Ropp said.

“It’s also kind of fun because I know Chef Nick Garrison, Chef Sean-Paul Quehl and all these guys that are working under Jacob can talk to me. They’ll send a text on a Saturday and say, we didn’t order enough curds. It’s hard and I get it with restaurants.

“You don’t know what your crowd’s going to be like, and that’s the fun part is they know, whether Jacob wants to come out to the farm and see me because I’m manning the store or if I’ve got the time to run an extra bag in, we get things worked out.

“I don’t want the customer to have to be told no, and that’s big for both of us.”

Record Attendance

When AgriNews first caught up with Ropp on March 1, he was selling cheese and handing out samples at his booth at the Illinois Product Expo on the state fairgrounds’ Orr Building. The Illinois Department of Agriculture event promotes Prairie State-products products and featured over 780 vendors.

“That weekend is huge. That’s a big kickoff for us. We had record attendance. The weather was beautiful. There was over 5,000 people through the doors. On a normal weekend down there for expo, we’re shooting for 4,000,” he said.