Straus Family Creamery is planning a big expansion, including moving the food processing facility from Marshall, a retail shop and a live dairy demo area where students and city folk can learn more about what it takes to get milk from cow to bottle, the Argus Courier is reporting.
Straus is the first organic creamery in the United States and has long had a commitment to sustainability. Now they want to consolidate their processing and administrative operations into a 100,000 square-foot facility and are shopping for an appropriate location in Petaluma.
“It’s important that people know where their food comes from, how to make it sustainable and what good land practices look like,” owner Albert Straus told the paper.
“Everything from the welfare of the animals to treating employees and each other with respect, it’s all something that we would like to show the community through a demonstration dairy at our new site.”
If Straus relocates its processing facility to Petaluma, it will have to pay about $1 million just for the initial wastewater costs, largely to hookup to the city’s system, according to the Argus.
Read about the city's ongoing efforts to expand the wastewater treatment plant capacity
That has prompted the company to look at other locations in Sonoma County as well as Marin, although Straus says Petaluma is the preferred spot.
In figuring out how to affordably manage with its wastewater, the company may partner with Cowgirl Creamery, which has also expressed concerns about the high cost of treatment in Petaluma.
To read more about Straus’s plans for expansion, pick up a copy of this week’s Argus Courier.
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