A taste of small town America, right next to the freeway

SALT LAKE CITY — The goal in the beginning wasn't to use the freeway frontage as a way to become a must-visit road-trip stop that pays homage to good old-fashioned, small-town America and be named Business of the Year for the entire state of Utah.

It was to build bigger restrooms.

The big statewide award came last fall, when Gov. Spencer Cox, at the annual One Utah Summit, handed the 2025 Utah Business of the Year trophy to The Creamery — Beaver's dairy treat emporium that has become a southern Utah phenomenon since moving to its new location next to I-15.

Matt Robinson, The Creamery's general manager, came on stage to accept the hardware.

"We were honored," he said, "but I still don't know who nominated us or how we were selected."

The perennially packed parking lot, the million-plus visitors, the 110,000 gallons of ice cream and the 160,000 pounds of cheese curd The Creamery sells on average every year might have had something to do with it.

In the age of cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all, same gas station and burger place on every corner uniformity, The Creamery is the exception to the rule — a business set apart by its uniqueness. Search the Earth, you're not going to find another enterprise quite like this in a setting quite like this.

And it really does trace back to those restrooms.

Ever since Eisenhower was president there's been a dairy co-op in Beaver — a collective where local farmers bring their milk to be processed. The Beaver co-op began in 1952, when the I-15 freeway was still a four-lane road (Eisenhower wouldn't even start the Interstate Highway System until 1956).

Through the years, locals would go to the co-op to buy their milk, ice cream, cheese and cheese curd — getting it fresh from the cow, as it were. After the freeway was finished in the early 1970s, out-of-towners would sometimes wander in too. Over time, thanks to the consistent quality of the product, the trickle turned into a stream.

By 2017, the smallish retail store next to the processing silos was bursting at the seams. "People in line for the ice cream ended up in the bathroom because it was so small," remembers longtime Creamery employee Tawnia Upson, then the retail supervisor and now the business support manager. She remembers several employees sitting down one day at a table for a brainstorming session and Andrea Blackburn, the HR manager, jotting the group's ideas down on a napkin.

Somebody suggested purchasing the land next door that fronted the freeway and building a stand-alone retail store there to, as Tanya says, "appeal to the traffic up and down I-15."

It was a true leap of faith. No one had any idea if it would work. There was no precedent; they weren't copying anybody or anything.

First, they needed a new name for the new look. The co-op retail store never had a formal name. Everyone just called it the creamery. So they put up a sign on the new building that said The Creamery.

Opening day was in November 2018. Enough people beat a path to The Creamery during the first year of operation to get the enterprise off the ground. But then came the COVID-19 pandemic.

"That's when our business really exploded," says Matt Robinson, "when people started traveling regionally by car as opposed to long distance air travel. I mean, 22,000 vehicles pass in front of us every single day.

"All the intangible factors came together in this location," he continues. "We're halfway between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas, we're halfway between Denver and Los Angeles, we're right on I-15, we're 2 miles from the dairy that provides the vast majority of our milk, we're 50 yards from the plant that makes our cheese curd and cheese. It's the culmination of all these factors that just kind of put us right in the center of the bullseye."

Then there's the healthy down home appeal.

"What people come here to buy is a close connection with small town America and dairy farms," says Matt. "They may not think of it intentionally, but they're coming here for an experience, and that's how we sell it. It's in small-town USA, it's wholesome, it's fresh and it's 2 miles from the source. And oh, by the way, we have the best cheese curd and ice cream you'll ever taste."

The Creamery's cheese curd recipe is a closely guarded secret, like the formula for Coca-Cola.

"We've had people from Wisconsin tell us our cheese curd is the best," says Matt.

The plan going forward for a business that in seven years has grown from 20 employees to 95 and experienced a 185% increase in sales?

"Continue to grow," says Matt. "Continue to innovate."

Coming up, he says, is a new habanero pepper fiery cheese curd with a flavor "that is just fantastic" and EV hookups for the parking lot. The 2025 Utah Business of the Year has no intention of resting on its laurels.

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