Darigold Co-Op Keeps Small Northwest Dairies Churning

CHANCES ARE you've seen the friendly faces of Joe and Montana, Gerald and Jasmine, Roger and Triple T — the dairy farmers and their cows featured in Darigold advertisements. It's also likely you've pulled a carton of the company's milk from the dairy case or used its rich, European-style butter for holiday baking.

But who knew that this Seattle-based dairy cooperative is made up of more than 500 regional farmers and dates back to 1918?

Or that the company is the fourth-largest agricultural cooperative in the country, collecting 2 million gallons of milk each day to produce the equivalent of 7.2 billion pounds of milk every year?

For sure, this company is a local icon, its corporate digs (complete with gleaming test kitchen) corralled along Rainier Avenue South. But its 11 processing plants are spread across Washington, Oregon and Idaho. And its customers are all over the world, accounting for annual sales of more than $2 billion.

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