ABiz -> On the Menu

On the Menu September/October

Too Sweet

Ice cream sales have scooped Kleinpeter Dairy into the top 100 dairy processors nationally.

Kleinpeter Dairy has been around since 1913, selling superior milk to the residents of Baton Rouge. Over time, the dairy and farm expanded, reaching out to adjacent communities with butter and cream. However, it took 95 years, until 2008, for fourth-generation President Jeff Kleinpeter to imagine churning his milk with Louisiana cane sugar and Pontchatoula strawberries into ice cream. Overnight, the little dairy in Baton Rouge made a giant leap onto what it hopes will become a national stage.

“Ice cream drives sales,” says Kleinpeter. The company went from $33 million in sales in 2007 to $39 million today, and has just been listed in the nation’s top 100 dairy processors. The ranking is according to finished dairy product sales for the most recently completed fiscal year. That’s remarkable for a local business that sells almost entirely in Louisiana, with just a few retail locations in southern Mississippi.

That’s the business end of this story, but the most exciting news for foodies is the five new flavors Kleinpeter just added to its line: Homemade Honey Pecan Vanilla, Homemade Bread Pudding, Ginger Snap, French Vanilla and Vanilla Bean join Cafe au Lait, Sweet Potato Pie and Bananas Foster in a roster of traditional Louisiana flavors. For locovores, the news is even better, because Kleinpeter sources all of its ingredients as close to home as it can get.

The Honey Pecan Vanilla uses local honey and pecans from Bergeron’s orchards in New Roads. Abbeville’s Steen’s Syrup mill is the source for the molasses in the ginger cookies swirled into Ginger Snap ice cream. Those cookies are baked at Edible Enterprises, a kitchen incubator based in Norco, as is the bread pudding in the Homemade Bread Pudding ice cream.

Kleinpeter is as proud of collaborating with Louisiana’s workforce as he is of the local flavors in his ice cream. “We help the economy by adding innovative new flavors made with fresh ingredients and using local people to make those ingredients. What could be better?” Kleinpeter says. — Mary Tutwiler

Articles by this Author:

View all articles by this author

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

You must be logged in to post a comment. Log in using your Facebook account or register if you do not have an account yet.

Most Read

Alex Lege: 'The Cop Watcher'

Is it a crime for citizens to photograph, video, or take notes of a police officer in the line of duty, or a right protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? Locally, such activity, as witnessed recently, will at the very least result in a night spent behind bars.
David Calhoun, ‘EB’ Brooks join Lafayette Central Park

David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
Update: PXP creating 600 jobs averaging 100k

At Thursday's State of the Economy luncheon, LEDA President and CEO Gregg Gothreaux said PXP has already quietly hired 180 people for its Broussard expansion.
Today in awesome: ESA’s Caffery wins fellowship

Episcopal School of Acadiana’s Dr. Joshua Caffery, chair of the school’s English Department, is headed to Washington, D.C., and the Library of Congress as the latest winner of the Alan Lomax Fellowship in Folklife Studies.
Zachary Barker takes helm of the Opportunity Machine

Zachary Barker continues making waves in Lafayette’s business scene, mostly recently being named director of the Opportunity Machine.

in case you missed it

COOL TOWN 2013

This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A curious compact

A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
Pooyie 2012

It's good, it's bad and it's just plain crazy.
Saving Saturday Night

An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Posthaste vs. HART FORTENBERY

Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.