Crème de la crème

A popular World War I-era song is entitled “How ‘Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm?” When it comes to Oregon Dairy—a thriving supermarket set amongst 400 lush green acres of farmland in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch Country—a more likely question is “How ‘Ya Gonna Get ‘Em to Leave?” That’s because with its homemade Lancaster County foods, farm-fresh local produce, straight-from-the cow fresh milk, eclectic gift shop, 200-seat restaurant, ice cream parlor, covered bridge, fishing pond, children’s playground and petting zoo, it’s easy to make a day out of a quick jaunt to pick up a quart of milk.

“We do a lot of things that are unique to supermarkets because we are a supermarket on the farm,” explains Curvin Hurst, owner and general manager. “We are working to set ourselves apart from the competition because people can come out here and play in the playground, see the deer in the deer pen and feed the goat in the goat pen. Every Father’s Day, we hold a catch-and-release fishing derby in our pond out back.”

Oregon Dairy was established in 1952, when Hurst’s parents bought a farm and named it after the hamlet of Oregon down the road. In 1974 the elder Earl D. Hurst built a convenience store “because he always had this goal of selling milk directly to the consumer and getting rid of the middleman,” Hurst says. In 1979, Earl sat his 10 children down and said he wanted to retire and give them the business. Six decided to take on the business and the convenience store was replaced with the current supermarket, which has been expanded and remodeled several times over the years.

As state-of-the-art supermarkets and Wal-Mart Supercenters encroach on Lancaster’s countryside, Oregon Dairy is still holding its own—and doing quite well. “We consider ourselves a destination store and we draw a lot further than a lot of stores do probably because of the fact that we are out here in the country,” Hurst says. “It’s not like people can walk here.”

BUGGIES AND BEEMERS
The entrance to Oregon Dairy is located at the foot of the Oregon Pike exit ramp on Route 222, the main highway into Lancaster from Reading. However, it’s easy for through traffic to whiz right past the farm’s landmark silos since Manheim Township, which incorporates Lititz, where the store is located, has extremely strict quality of life ordinances that prohibit billboards and signage on the highways. Furthermore, the protection of most of the surrounding farmland as an “Ag Zone” ensures that subdivisions won’t be cropping up anytime soon.

Nonetheless, Oregon Dairy draws an eclectic group of customers. “We’re catering to the buggies and the Beemers,” Hurst says, pointing to the covered shed where a horse-drawn buggy is hitched to the post while its owner shops. “We have our conservative Amish that come in here, fill their carts and buy a whole lot and we have the Beemers with their BMWs who are after the organics and higher-end things,” he says, while showing a customer where the newly expanded gluten-free section is located.

Whether arriving by horse and carriage, Buick or BMW, shoppers visiting Oregon Dairy ascend a winding drive lined with sandwich boards touting specials and services, such as the weekly car wash. It’s part of Oregon Dairy’s Fundraisers program. Beneath the redwood barn façade is a large carport where shoppers load their cars during inclement weather and where seasonal items, such as bales of hay, pumpkins and potted mums, are merchandised. If the timing is right, one might also stumble upon a sidewalk sale from the store’s Country Gift Shop. In mid-September, customers were busy snatching up last year’s Christmas decorations and summer leftovers at ridiculously low prices.

Located in the front of the store, Country Gift Shop is overflowing with a hodgepodge of candles, stuffed animals, birdhouses, artwork, knickknacks, lamps, umbrellas, stationery, umbrellas and hundreds of other items.

CHICKEN AND WAFFLES
A passageway leads from the Country Gift Shop to the Oregon Dairy Country Restaurant & Buffet, a 200-seat restaurant that is also accessible from an outside entrance.

The restaurant serves some 5,000 meals a week—pretty good, considering the restaurant, like the rest of the store, is closed on Sundays—and has a menu of some 80 items, specializing in what’s called Lancaster County Favorites, including baked oatmeal, chicken pot pie (made with noodles, not a pastry shell), chicken croquettes, homemade meatloaf, ham loaf, pork and sauerkraut, ham balls, Salisbury steak, liver and onions, macaroni and cheese and stewed tomatoes, along with something called a Country Style Train Wreck—seasoned and grilled beef steak meat, surrounded by chili, stewed tomatoes and real mashed potatoes.

“We get a little bit creative with wraps and ciabattas and try not be just meatloaf and mashed potatoes and chicken pot pie, but when you look at the sales, we don’t sell wraps and ciabattas. We sell meatloaf, mashed potatoes, chicken pot pie and chicken and waffles because that is what people want when they come here,” says Elton Horst, restaurant manager. He says the menu is revised about once a year. “We have some items that don’t sell well, but we leave them on. We’re not a steakhouse, so we don’t sell a lot of steaks, but you have to have a steak on the menu. But when you look at the steak sales against chicken and waffles, there’s no comparison.”

Chicken and waffles consists of a regular waffle made from pancake mix topped with cooked breast of chicken and gravy. “It’s our No. 1 item,” Horst says. “We sell hundreds and hundreds of them. That’s typical Lancaster County diner food and at one time you would have been able to find it in all of the local diners.”  

Housed on a porch overlooking the farm, pond, covered bridge, playground and petting pens and accessible from outside and inside the restaurant is The Milkhouse ice cream parlor, which has been in operation since the convenience store days. “One of the owners is a builder and we just put in a new playground this summer,” Horst says. “It’s been a real hit and has really increased our ice cream shop business.”

BAKED OATMEAL 
The restaurant’s kitchen not only prepares food for dining room patrons but for the supermarket deli case as well. A large six-tiered Oregon Dairy Kitchen open case is stocked with homemade favorites such as chicken croquettes, Mom Hurst’s Meatloaf, pork and sauerkraut, baked corn, bread filling (stuffing), mashed potatoes, Amish coleslaw, egg and olive salad, cranberry relish, bacon dressing and red beet pickled eggs.

On the opposite side of the deli aisle, a two-tiered case is full of Oregon Dairy’s Famous Baked Oatmeal. Available in some two dozen flavors, the casserole-like baked oatmeal makes a nutritious breakfast when microwaved and served with milk. “Baked oatmeal is one of our top selling items,” says Jim Hensel, perishables food manager. “People come far and wide for it and we have such a big selection. Some other stores in the area are now starting to make their own because of the success we’ve had with it.”

In a workspace behind the oatmeal cooler, employees prepare subs and other sandwiches. Across the aisle from the preparation area is the service deli, where both Boar’s Head and Dietz & Watson lunchmeats are carried, along with homemade roast beef, baked ham and turkey and local specialties, like pork pan pudding and five brands of sweet Lebanon bologna.

The deli/prepared foods and service meat aisle is the last in the shopping pattern. Shoppers entering Oregon Dairy’s main entrance arrive in produce, where local items, including onions, Bartlett pears, bell peppers and “medium” heads of cabbage the size of bowling ball, are strong sellers.

Then there are the apples. “We do an outstanding job with apples,” says Hensel. “We sell so many apples in dollars that it is sometimes as high as 25% of our department sales. When it comes to the layout, some people probably would not agree with our apple merchandising because we kind of overkill it, but it sells and is a profitable entity.”

Produce wraps around into Aisle 1 and leads into Bakery. Hurst is proud of Oregon Dairy’s made-from-scratch homemade cakes, shortcake, whoopie pies and shoofly pie.

“Wedding cakes are our specialty,” Hurst says, motioning to the dozen or so sample cakes topping the department’s cases. A tiny roped-off nook in the corner of the department has a table and chairs where the bride-to-be can sit with the store’s wedding planner and order her cake.

“We average six to seven cakes a weekend to the point where in June we have to turn them down because we can only do so many cakes,” Hurst says. “For a supermarket we are probably one of the leaders in wedding and other cakes. Our decorators are excellent and because our cakes are made from scratch they taste good too.”

Five doors of frozen cakes, cheesecakes and ice cream cakes lead into the service seafood department, housed in an alcove along the back wall. The busy department accounts for about 3% of total store sales. In addition to service fresh case and self-service coffin cases and upright doors, there is also a frozen service case, where the way the king crab legs, breaded filets, stuffed clams and crab cakes are merchandised they look just-off-the-boat fresh.

“This cooler really helps keep our product fresh longer and really helps with our shrink,” Hurst says. “The customer knows it is frozen and it is printed on their tag that it is frozen,” he says.

Seafood leads into dairy where another barnyard surprise awaits. Next to the eggs a coop holds five clucking chickens. “These are actual chickens that were alive and we took them to a taxidermist,” Hurst explains. “Kids come here to talk to the chickens and they think they are actually laying eggs. We decorate them for different holidays, like putting red, white and blue bunting around their cage for July 4th.”

The chickens aren’t the only animatronic creatures in the store; a talking cow head above the bulk department shouts out greetings to passersby.

BULKING UP
Oregon Dairy’s bulk department is a sight for the eyes, stocking some 400 items in pre-measured clear plastic containers. There are spices, wheat germ, flour, instant pudding, flavored gelatin, nuts, trail mix, fortune cookies, lasagna noodles, French burnt peanuts, gummy bears, Swedish fish, gummy fried eggs and dozens of old-fashioned candies such as Mary Jane, Good-N-Plenty and pink Canada mints.

“We belong to a share group and they ask me why we would waste so much space on this product,” Hurst says. “I’ll tell you why. It’s high mark-up and does exceptionally well. I’m talking a 43% mark-up here,” he says.
The rest of Oregon Dairy’s grocery aisles are similar to most other supermarkets, with the possible exception of the salty snacks aisle where pretzels and potato chips from more than a dozen local manufacturers are on display. Many of those potato chips differ from their counterparts from other parts of the country because they are cooked in good, old-fashioned lard.

“Lancaster County is noted for many foods,” Hurst says. “We have some phenomenal cheeses, pretzels and potato chips. That is a draw. Our lard chips may not be healthy food—just good food!” And they add to the delicious experience that is Oregon Dairy.

Udderly delicious
All supermarkets sell milk. But how many truck it in daily from the family farm across the street and pasteurize and bottle it in the backroom?

Oregon Dairy is at the top of that very short list. Its barn and silos are visible from the store parking lot, the adjacent 400-acre family farm is home to 450 cows. Every morning when they are milked, the milk is placed in a stainless steel tractor trailer and driven less than a quarter mile to the supermarket, where it is processed into whole milk, skim milk, 1%, 2% and heavy cream.

The milk is so fresh at the one unit independent that people drive miles for it. “We sell about 25% more milk than the average grocery store because we process it here and put a greater emphasis on it,” Curvin Hurst, owner and general manager tells Grocery Headquarters. “We’re noted for our very extraordinary chocolate milk and we sell a tremendous amount of it.”  

Oregon Dairy’s cream also gets high marks. “We ship our excess cream to Leibys in Tamaqua, Pa. and they make our ice cream for us. We also sell the cream in our store as heavy whipping cream. It is pasteurized, but not ultra pasteurized like most supermarket heavy cream so it whips up better and makes great homemade ice cream,” Hurst says.

The bottling operation runs every day, except Wednesdays and on Sundays, when the store is closed.