Weeks after Hastings Creamery closed, facility is lost in an overnight fire

HASTINGS, MINN. — The decline has been devastatingly swift for the owners of Hastings Creamery, a historic milk processor in this Mississippi River city.

A little more than two years since a dozen farmers in the Smoky Hills Farmers Cooperative purchased Hastings Creamery — with promises to boost local organic milk production and incomes for family dairy farmers — the facility is gone, having succumbed to an overnight fire this week.

The demise of the longtime dairy staple comes just weeks after the creamery shut its doors, prompting shock and speculation among community members.

In June, the creamery — which has produced dairy products in Hastings for 110 years — lost access to the sewers after officials with the Metropolitan Council alleged the creamery had been dumping raw milk into the sewer, filling the water treatment plant with white liquid.

Then, three weeks ago, the creamery closed its doors, turning away customers and worrying dairy farmers who sold their milk to the creamery.

On Wednesday night, the creamery burned. By morning, officials declared the facility a total loss.

Dakota County Commissioner Joe Atkins said fellow Commissioner Mike Slavik had been discussing plans to rejuvenate the shuttered facility on Wednesday at a meeting with several locals. Twelve hours later, flames and smoke were spotted rising from the creamery.

At 3 p.m. Thursday, smoke hung over Hwy. 61 as police officers and yellow tape kept people from getting too close to the creamery and piles of charred debris.

Hastings police investigator Chad Schmichte called it "a crime scene."

City Administrator Dan Wietecha said the fire was unfortunate, but it was good the building wasn't occupied.

"The fire started and was put out and will be investigated," he said.

Officials have not yet determined a cause for the blaze, but they say an investigation is being led by the State Fire Marshal, Hastings Fire and Hastings Police departments. No one was on site at the closed creamery during the fire.

"It's easy for people to have ideas [about the cause] but I wouldn't put stock in people's ideas or rumors," Wietecha said, adding that he's waiting for the investigation results.

Tina Folch, who grew up in Hastings and still lives there, recalled going to the creamery with her family nearly 50 years ago when she was very young. She said she's feeling a "huge sadness" after hearing about the fire.

"I think everyone has an emotional attachment to the creamery because this is a place we have grown up going for eggs and milk," she said. "It's always been a very family-centric place."

She remembered getting 25-cent milkshakes at the creamery and seeing community members catching up with neighbors there, too, she said.

Many locals were upset when the creamery began having issues with the Metropolitan Council in the spring, Folch said.

"It's really heartbreaking to see kind of the slow spiral that's occurred over the last several months," she said.

The death of the creamery is not only a tragic loss for the community of Hastings, but also for the dairy producers in the barns throughout southeastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin's dairyland.

Lucas Sjostrom, executive director of the Minnesota Milk Producers Association, said in an email that most of the farmers have been able to continue to sell milk, but those customers may be "day-by-day, rather than a permanent buyer of milk."

A spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Agriculture confirmed the agency has been working with affected dairy farmers for several months to help them find new buyers for their milk.

Earlier this summer, when the plant lost access to the sewer, one Winona County dairy family spoke about the precariousness and increased financial difficulties for farmers who lose a market.

"I don't think the Met Council really understood the ramifications of what that does for the operations out there and then we can't take our milk there and get it processed," Carey Tweten, a Lewiston dairyman, told the Star Tribune.

Smoky Hills Farmers Cooperative purchased the Hastings Creamery in the spring of 2021, boasting a membership of about a dozen farmer-owners. At the time, the purchase was viewed as an end-to-end way for dairy farmers to control the retailing of the milk produced on their farms.

But in an interview earlier this year with the Progressive Dairy Podcast, Smoky Hills owner Justin Malone said he and three others had taken over control of the creamery in Hastings to allay financial concerns of the others.

"We're not just a board who, if it doesn't work out, we're just going to walk away from this," Malone said during the interview. "I want the people to know we are in this and are responsible for this and we want it to succeed."

Hastings Creamery did not respond to a request for comment.

Slavik, the Dakota County commissioner, had been brainstorming with locals Wednesday on how to get the creamery up and running.

"Our biggest concern was, how do you get something that has such a storied history back in operation again?" he said, adding that the creamery was "one of those community pride things you hate to lose."

Even before the fire, millions in upgrades would have likely been needed to make the creamery operational, Slavik said.

Slavik said, in his opinion, a new owner would have also been useful in getting the creamery reopened.

"Unfortunately, with what happened last night, the story is different [now]," he said.