Nearly two years ago Robert Patterson and Andy Putnam with Westfield Maid Cooperative, Inc. appeared at a Chautauqua County Legislature committee meeting to talk about their plan to make juice pouches for schools, hospitals, jails and more.

At that time, they were seeking $4.2 million to $6 million to make the project happen. The county agreed to help them apply to the Community Development Block Economic Development Grant through the state Office of Community Renewal.

But that fell through.

In fact, they were unsuccessful at getting any public financing for the project.

Westfield Main Cooperative, Inc. purchased the former DeHaven’s Westfield Dodge City motor vehicle dealership on Route 20 in the town of Westfield in 2023. They want to transform it into a plant to package grape juice pouches.

But they weren’t giving up. Westfield Maid Cooperative continued to press forward.

The farmer-owned cooperative, which celebrated its 100-year anniversary this year, previously purchased the former DeHaven’s Westfield Dodge City motor vehicle dealership on Route 20 in the town of Westfield.

They changed paths, scaled back the project, applied for a loan through a bank that focuses on helping farmers, and just this month got approved for a Special Use Permit from the Westfield Town Board for their development.

Patterson, the president of the cooperative, and Putnam, who is the director of marketing and strategy, sat down with The Post-Journal/OBSERVER to discuss the project.

“This is farmers making it happen,” Putnam said.

Pictured from left are Andy Putnam, Robert Patterson and Ron Catalano with Westfield Maid Cooperative, Inc. P-J photos by Gregory Bacon

HOW THE PROJECT ORIGINATED

Today the cooperative is made up of 57 concord grape farmers from Chautauqua County, Erie County, Pa. and Erie County, N.Y. They have about 1,200 acres of vineyards under contract and produce 5,000 tons of crops annually.

They have a contract with Refresco to manage their grapes.

“They process them into grape juice concentrate and we buy some of it back. Our intention is to produce these 4 ounce USDA 100% concord grape juice concentrate,” Patterson said, holding up a Good n’ Grapey juice pouch.

Patterson said about a decade ago, the cooperative wanted to explore alternative markets.

In 2018 they found a partner in Manhasset, N.Y., which took Westfield Maid’s juice and made 4 fluid ounce juice cups, which were distributed to school children.

In 2019 they sold 1.9 million juice cups, all from Westfield Maid.

But when COVID-19 hit and schools closed, the distributor ran out of money and shut down the business.

Patterson noted that when the distributor went out of business, some of his former customers contacted Westfield Maid and suggested they take over the business.

But they had other requests as well.

The tops of the juice cups were hard for children to remove. They also easily spilled, so the schools wanted a different package.

They suggested a single serve rectangle juice box or a pouch.

Patterson said the equipment to have rectangle juice boxes would cost $5 million and had a lead time of five years to make.

Since that option was so expensive and had a long delay, Westfield Maid began exploring juice pouches.

The members came up with the “Good n’ Grapey” name. They hired a branding company from Pittsburgh to come up with the package design and artwork.

After creating some juice packages that don’t require a straw, they distributed them to some schools.

“They were thrilled with this packaging, thrilled with the brand name,” Putnam said.

The flavor, too, was a big hit with children, unlike some other juice competitors.

“At one of the schools here locally, the school’s food service director told me, ‘I don’t even order their grape juice because it tastes so horrible my kids won’t drink it,” Putnam said.

Other key factors that schools like include that there are no additives in the juice and that it’s shelf stable.

FUNDING CHALLENGES

Putnam said they were at one point eligible for a $200,000 loan from the county Industrial Development Agency. But they weren’t successful elsewhere.

“The way public funding works is you have to fill out an application, be approved, sign a contract, get a bridge loan with another lending institution, do the project, meet the milestones and do the reporting, and then receive the payment,” he said.

But the bridge funding became a problem.

“The feedback we’ve got from six commercial banks on that is they no longer trust New York state to pay,” Putnam said.

With public funding no longer on the table, the development was scaled back to a $2 million project. They approached Farm Credit East, which specializes in agricultural loans. Should they approve the loan internally, it will be forwarded to the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development Business and Industry Loan Guarantee Program.

“Unlike a Small Business Administration loan, where we have to pledge personal assets to get the loan, in this case the United States Department of Agriculture becomes the guarantor,” Putnam explained.

They hope to hear within the next 90 days if they get their funding. If for some reason that falls through, Putnam said they will continue to look at other options. Once they get the funds needed, they want to start construction on the building immediately and order the packaging machine, which is expected to take eight months to deliver.

Ideally they were hoping to start packaging juice packets by Oct. 1, although with eight months needed for the packing machine, it likely won’t happen before the spring. The machine can package 80 packets of juice a minute and they can’t move forward without it.

FUTURE GOALS

Once the loan is secured, the machine is ordered and arrives, Putnam said they will have their own members in the cooperative run the plant.

Eventually, they will hire four to six people to take over the packaging. If things go as well as they hope, they will order a second packaging machine and hire more staff. Their long-term plans include hiring as many as 45 people.

The key for that will be continued, sustained growth. Putnam said right now they’re targeting New York schools as well as institutions like hospitals, jails, assisted living facilities, colleges and food banks. Eventually they will reach beyond the state’s borders and market their packets throughout the country.

Their focus is not retail. Putnam noted that there’s a lot of competition on retail shelves. The other issue is that some of the juice that their members already produce is being sold in stores; they don’t want to create a product which will compete against what their members already produce.

But even without retail, Putnam said they have a market of about 170 million people annually.

“It’s endless,” he said.

In fact, Putnam said he could envision doubling the amount of concord grapes needed to fill this market a decade after it’s launched.

Right now in the Lake Erie Concord Grape Region, Putnam said they produce about 140,000 tons annually.

“Instead of 140,000 tons, we’d be looking at about 280,000-plus,” he said.

Patterson said they have high hopes that children will drink concord grape juice in school and become lifelong consumers. “Our intention is to change the culture of juice in schools through kids in schools,” he said.