Organic Valley Highlights Authenticity With Table-to-farm Visits

According to the trade group, sales of organic food and nonfood products in the United States climbed to $44.3 billion in 2015 from $40.4 billion in 2014, which represents the industry’s largest dollar gain ever; $39.7 billion of last year’s total sales were for organic food. According to the trade group, Millennial consumers, particularly in urban centers, are responsible for much of that growth. Authenticity is “the biggest key for consumers,” said Sarah Masoni, product and process development manager at the Food Innovation Center at Oregon State University. Organic Valley introduced its new website in April, with the goal of telling farmers’ stories and, in doing so, personalizing people’s consumption of organic products. The group was careful to make the website mobile-friendly, a vital quality since people often employ their phones to do research and share information as they shop for food. The site features a tool to help people identify local stores that carry Organic Valley dairy products, as well as stories about farmers across the United States who belong to the cooperative, and more than a dozen recipes for dishes that contain Organic Valley products, with new ones added twice a year. About 40 percent of the dairy produced by the cooperative is sold as bulk milk and other ingredients to manufacturers like Stonyfield, while dairy products made by Organic Valley and carrying its brand are sold by retailers including Whole Foods Market, Costco, Walmart and Target, as well as by conventional grocery, convenience and specialty food stores. The cooperative, which for many years invited retailers and others in the food industry to visit its members’ farms, began offering free “farm discovery tours” to the public in 2014. The hope, according to Karen Zuckerman, chief creative officer of the agency HZDG, which worked with Organic Valley on its marketing strategy, is that they will share their experiences on the farm with their many followers, who will then investigate organic farming for themselves. “Our hope is by building the movement, our business will grow with it,” said Lewis Goldstein, vice president for brand marketing at Organic Valley, which is spending $500,000 to $1 million on the new website and social media programs. Stephen Zagor, dean of culinary business and industry studies at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York, praised Organic Valley’s new website for allowing people to “touch, taste and feel in an emotional way the Organic Valley brand.”