Gossner Foods makes plant additions

 Tyler Udy grew up around cheese.

 As Edward Gossner’s great-grandson, the Gossner Foods factory has always been a part of Udy’s life.

 “I’ve been in and out of here all my life,” Udy said. “I always would work summer jobs here growing up, and now I’m an owner.”

 And he finds himself engrossed in one of the largest expansions the factory has had since its founding.

 “We’ve grown enough and our customers are taking enough that we needed to expand the store. We are way excited about it,” Udy said. “We’ve built two new additions this year: one for the cheese plant and one for the milk plant. One of them is actually an airplane hangar.”

 For nearly 46 years, Gossner Foods has been a household name in northern Utah. Since its founding, Gossner’s has been family owned.

 The company was founded in 1966 by a Swiss immigrant named Edward Gossner, a cheese maker who left his homeland to seek success in America.

 He first joined his brother, a successful cheese maker, in Wisconsin producing Swiss cheese. His brother left Switzerland seven years earlier and had created his own cheese plant. Gossner later inherited this plant from his brother.

 On a family trip Gossner drove through Cache Valley and was reminded of home. The climate of the valley was similar to Switzerland, where he had first learned to make his specialty Swiss cheese.

 Not long after that, Gossner founded a Swiss cheese plant outside of Logan – the largest in the world at the time.

 However, Gossner Foods wasn’t the only cheese venture of Edward Gossner.

 “Cache Valley Cheese was actually started by Edward Gossner,” Udy said. “We actually do a little bit with that brand, but that’s not us anymore.”

 A couple years after founding Cache Valley Cheese, Gossner split with his partners and started again – this time forming Gossner Foods.

 Cache Valley Cheese is now located in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

 Kelly Luthi has worked in the Gossner Foods plant for 27 years. He remembers the when Gossner Foods developed a unique way to package milk, which would later become their biggest industry.

 “We’re the oldest company in the United State doing shelf-stable milk,” Luthi said. “It is fluid dairy milk that’s packaged in such a way that it doesn’t require refrigeration until it’s opened.”

 The milk, which comes in 8 ounce and quart size cartons, stays fresh without refrigeration until it is opened and is preservative free. The milk is distinctive, but commonplace in the pantries of Cache Valley locals.

 The milk is not only consumed by locals – it is produced by them too.

 “All of our cheese is made from milk coming out of local farms and dairies,” Udy said. “I don’t think a day goes by that we aren’t reminded by our boss that without the farmers, we’re nothing.”

 With the new additions more milk can be stored, more cheese can be produced, and that means more business for local farmers.

 “We are a fourth generation family company,” Udy said. “And we support local farmers and local families.”