This month, Bay Area artisan cheesemaker Cowgirl Creamery made a number of auspicious announcements—adding a new Deputy Managing Director to its leadership team, reintroducing a fan favorite in its Clabbered Cottage Cheese, and rebranding other fresh cheese offerings.
I recently had the opportunity to run some questions by Sue Conley, who founded Cowgirl Creamery alongside Peggy Smith in the early 1990s and helped put the North Bay on the map as a cheesemaking region par excellence.
Q: Tell me a little bit about Cowgirl Creamery’s recent rebranding of several products? What prompted the refreshed look?
Sue Conley: The opening of our new Petaluma creamery this past year, which allows us to finally increase production of our cheeses (as well as re-introduce our clabbered cottage cheese), marked an ideal moment to rebrand the packaging of our fresh cheeses. As we begin to reach a larger audience, we felt it was an opportune time to create a new look reflective of our company’s philosophy.
Q: How would you describe the ethos and the aesthetic behind the Cowgirl Creamery brand?
SC: Our aesthetic, like our brand, is a melding of elegant and approachable, rustic but with a dash of sophistication (think of our style as “Dolly Parton playing Carnegie Hall”). All the cheeses at Cowgirl Creamery showcase or accentuate the inherent flavors of the clean, delicious, organic milk from our dairy partners, Straus Family Creamery and Bivalve Dairy, so the design was meant to be equally fresh and playful.
Q: How does the new packaging better communicate that vision?
SC: For the fresh cheeses, specifically, we wanted the packaging to be light and bright, elegant yet playful. Our designer, Mary Kate Maltzan of The Workyard, worked with us to find that balance. The whimsical motif on the containers is inspired by the stitching on our cowgirl boots. (And if you look close, you’ll see some other hidden objects in the pattern like a horseshoe and a stirring spoon). The new milky pastel color palette was introduced to differentiate our fresh cheese from our aged cheeses. The colors were inspired by the light on the farms at sunrise and sunset when the grasses turn golden, and the sky moves from light blue to pink. The sparkling logo on top is just us Cowgirls, having a little fun. We take our cheese seriously, but not ourselves.
Q: When, where, and through what channels will these recently re-launched products become available to retail customers? To end-consumers?
SC: We are rolling out the new packaging slowly, but it is now available at our two shops in San Francisco’s Ferry Building and Point Reyes, our online store, along with specialty shops, grocery stores and restaurants in the Bay Area, LA, and in select stores nationwide. Look for wider national availability in spring 2019.
With a new facility, increased production, and an evolving brand identity, the future looks bright for this Bay Area artisan cheese mainstay.
