Cream of the Crop

As a co-owner of the business, Straus refused to give up. "I experimented with quite a few things," says Straus, now 43. "We stopped using herbicides [to control weeds] in 1974. In 1980, we started using a no-till seeder to plant some of our crops. We were the first ones in our area to do that."

Still, the business wasn't profitable. "It was very discouraging, working as hard as you could and not making any progress. Everything I tried to do to save money or increase revenue didn't [produce] results," says Straus. "I was beating my head against a wall."

In 1994, it was time to take a leap of faith. "To survive, we had to get some profitability into [the business]," says Straus. He and his parents, Bill and Ellen, decided to launch Straus Family Creamery and go completely organic. The solution was an exciting one: "I'd always had it in the back of my mind to do something like this," Straus says.

The shift to organic production methods would open a whole new world of possibilities. Instead of selling its raw product to a co-op that, in turn, sold it to private-label companies, Straus Family Creamery would create its own product line and bottle its own milk--with its own pricing strategy. "With your own product and your own label, you can set a price that makes a profit," says Straus.

Converting the operation into an organic dairy farm would also be good for the environment, a commitment the family had honored for years. "We've been very active in the environmental community," says Straus. "[Going organic] was something we believed in."

This article was originally published in the November 1998 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Cream of the Crop.