NorthBay biz heads to the pasture for a profile of Clover Stornetta Farms, Sonoma County’s legendary dairy producer.
The next thing that “cow” brings to mind, of course, is the brilliant body of work that cartoonist Gary Larson (“The Far Side”) put together, including the exquisite three-panel set showing, first, a hillside group of bovines on two legs, each holding a martini glass and chatting with his neighbor. In the second panel a cow lookout near the road yells, “Car!” In the third, of course, the entire herd is seen in four-footed mode, as if everything were normal.
But right up there, in cow lore, is the legendary “Clo,” the smiley-faced, four-leaf-clover-clutching Clover Stornetta mascot, brought fetchingly to life through the artistic pen of William Nellor and the subtle punnery of ad man Jim Benefield, who together created the early and main body of roadside advertising we’ve known and loved here in Sonoma County for more than three decades. Three decades. Can you believe that? One doubts it’s the shoes (hooves). Must be the “vision” thing.
“Actually, we’ve been successful enough that we’ve been able to extend our distribution area to include pretty much the entire Bay Area, Sacramento and, with some of our products, the Los Angeles Basin,” says youthful and energetic company President Marcus Benedetti, the third generation of his family to head up the organization.
“But the success of our company has come from my grandfather’s and my father’s good sense—even vision—to focus on the needs of our customers and on maintaining a local sense of who we are. Our dairy suppliers are local farmers. We process their raw materials locally, and we distribute them locally. The essence of good milk is its freshness and its cleanliness.”
Freshness is easy to understand. Milk has an 18-day window. (“That’s to be on the safe side; it should be good for another week beyond that,” says Benedetti.) The shorter the time from cow to fresh-from-the-refrigerator-cold glass the better, especially if there’s a warm chocolate chip cookie in the mix. But cleanliness?
“There are objective markers for cleanliness in milk,” says Benedetti with a laugh. “It’s all about bacteria counts, and those are measurable. Coliform counts, somatic cell counts and standard plate counts—very important. The higher the bacteria count, the lower the quality of the milk. The lower the count, the better the quality. We have the lowest bacterial count in the country. We exceed the state regulations by a mile, and our state regulations exceed the federal ones by an equal amount. That’s one thing about living in California: You get the best milk in the country!” (Pete Hardin, publisher of The Milkweed, agrees, citing Clover Stornetta as “quite possibly the cleanest milk in the United States.”)
The legacy continues
Born in Petaluma in May 1975, Marcus Benedetti grew up in the business, but wasn’t sure if he was going to automatically join the family firm. For one thing, he headed about as far north as was physically possible to attend college. “First of all, it was something of the lore of the last frontier for me,” he says about studying business at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. “Second, I love the outdoors, so I spent my summers working as a guide on whitewater rafting expeditions, sort of killing both of those birds with a single stone. It was a great experience.”
If he didn’t see milk as a calling, he did see his father, Dan Benedetti, and his grandfather (the late Gene Benedetti) thoroughly enjoying their daily work routines. “My dad has always been my best friend. Still is. And to be able to work with both my dad and my grandpa? Well, that was pretty special. It was fun!”
Gene—”Don’t think about yesterday or worry about tomorrow”—was a Sonoma County original, a legend in business and the fiery coach of the famed Petaluma Leghorns semi-pro football team in the 1950s. (His love of football brought former San Francisco Forty Niner Bob St. Clair into the fold as a Clover salesman.) Dan, as chairman of the board, is still active in the business. “He’ll take an extended leave now and again,” says Marcus, “but he’s a great sounding board for me. I get him back here a lot to draw upon his experience and wisdom. He’s very vocal about ‘the consumer,’ and the symbiotic relationships we need to build between us, our consumers and our suppliers.
“Consumers have come to expect the best from us, and if we were to lose that level of trust, well, we’d be done. Look, we have the most affluent, the most well-educated consumers in the world, and they want a product that’s natural, holistic. They want a local product that’s made with the least amount of inputs, the least amount of handling. They want to know we’re respecting the land we use and the people who produce the product [and paying them well, so they can sustain their family farms], and that we’re treating the animals in a humane manner. We have a lot to live up to.”
A history of excellence
The current operation is a direct descendant of the Petaluma Cooperative Dairy that was founded just over a century ago. “Clo” became the official mascot in 1969, posing on county billboards with that insouciant smile, the four-leaf clover and clever puns like “Clo’s Line” and “Clo Magnum” (subtly working a little Wine Country theme in there). This year’s contest winner for the company’s next billboard—a takeoff of Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” films—is “Clo Ahead, Milk My Day.”
In 1975, a devastating fire destroyed the entire Petaluma processing plant. Two years later, Gene and partners Paul Ross, Dan Benedetti, Gary Imm, John Markusen and Bill Van Damm purchased a wholesale distribution business from California Co-op and Stornetta’s Dairy in Sonoma. In 1984, they consolidated the operation in Petaluma. In June 1991, they opened a new, state-of-the-art processing plant there, where computerized equipment allows three times the previous capacity with no increase in manpower.
“When we became Clover Stornetta Farms in 1997,” says Benedetti, “we committed ourselves to bringing consumers the best possible products and maintaining our goal of keeping family farming alive and well. One of the means to that goal is the North Coast Excellence Certified (NCEC) program we instituted in 1994. This program has become a national benchmark for achieving the highest quality milk products, through a third-party certification system. The aim of NCEC is to reconnect consumers to local dairy families and give those same consumers the opportunity to make an informed choice on the purchase of their dairy products. The major features of NCEC are that we provide quality milk, based on ultra-low coliform counts, standard plate counts and somatic cell counts.”
Happy cows mean happy consumers
“We’ve long maintained that we have no need or use for the genetically engineered bovine growth hormone, rBST, that artificially stimulates milk production. Also, we’re convinced the family farm is best preserved by sustainable agriculture practices that are, in the end, economically viable, environmentally sound and socially responsible.”
In 2000, in keeping with that approach, Clover Stornetta became the first dairy in the United States awarded with the American Humane Association’s “Humane Certified” label for humanely produced dairy products. “What this means,” says Benedetti, “is our producers’ cows are free from unnecessary distress, fear, pain, injury, discomfort, hunger or thirst. I believe we’re the only dairy in California to hold this certification. In 2004, we were the first dairy in the state to be awarded the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) certification. HACCP is a food safety and management program that provides a structured and scientific approach to the control of product safety. Mostly, it ensures consumers receive the highest quality milk possible, and that sustainable and humane agriculture practices are maintained.
“Sustainable just makes sense, if you think about it. We’re in the process of auditing our daily business practices to find areas where we can reduce our emissions while streamlining our operations to make us more efficient in every area possible.”
The company also takes it upon itself to advertise its environmental awareness via space on its milk cartons. A recent half-gallon purchase I made warned me to be aware of winter “Spare the Air” days, where fireplace use is prohibited. The reason is simple: Even short-term exposure to air particles from wood smoke—inside and outdoors—can aggravate lung disease, cause asthma attacks or acute bronchitis, and may add to the risk of respiratory infection. (I wrote down the phone number: 877-4NO-BURN.)
Farm local
These values clearly carry over to the company’s providers (family farms in Sonoma, Marin and Mendocino counties averaging 350 acres and 250 cows each). Marin County’s Lafranchi Dairy sits among the rolling west county hills near Nicasio. The third-generation Lafranchis—led by Randy and his brothers, Scott and Rick—milk 425 cows, who graze upon 1,150 acres of certified organic farmland. Says Randy Lafranchi, who enjoys being outside and working with cows, “We’re pleased to be shipping to Clover Stornetta Farms. It’s a good feeling to belong to an organization that aims for and maintains high quality and good practices. We’re rewarded for maintaining standards that are much stricter than required by either the federal or state governments.”
Swiss immigrants Fred and Zelma Lafranchi started their family dairy in 1919, passed it on to their children in 1961 and, in 1973, to son Will Lafranchi, whose children took the reins in 2005. The Lafranchis have long been keenly aware of environmental issues. All of their land is certified organic and the family is presently establishing a composting operation that will handle all of the dairy’s manure, along with community green and equestrian waste, working hand-in-hand with the Marin Resource Conservation District as well as Lunny Paving and Grading.
“We’re also starting our own ‘farmstead’ cheese plant,” says Randy’s brother, Rick, “to better ensure the survivability of our family farm into the coming generations, but also to show off the quality of our milk products. The term ‘farmstead’ means it all comes from our farm, sort of like ‘estate bottled’ in the wine business. But we’ve been very happy to become a part of the Clover Stornetta group because of its strong local and regional ties and its ultra-high standards for organic milk quality. We’d always admired the way it operates and the quality of suppliers it works with, and when it was expanding its organic milk portfolio four years ago, we were ready to join.”
Feed the fans
Marcus Benedetti points to suppliers like the Lafranchis as being the foundation of the company’s expanding good health. “We’ve been on a pretty good growth pattern for the last seven years,” he says with pride. “Part of that expansion has come by filling a void in areas new to us, but part has come from new products, which we like to call ‘market disruptors.’ The best of our new products, I think, are our organic, cream-on-the-top, whole milk yogurts that are just now being released. Mothers of infants love them; they’re like dessert! We have eight flavors, including plain, peach, strawberry, blueberry, forest berry, vanilla, tropical and mocha.
“But the biggest push in the last seven years has been the move toward organic, that awareness that we need to pay as close attention to the health of the land as we do to the health of our cows—and, in turn, the health of our consumers. We’re committed to providing our customers with the freshest, cleanest, best tasting milk they can buy well into the future.”
Must be the vision thing. Works pretty darned well for Clover Stornetta.
