Winder Farms is back with its namesake family.
The long-time dairy with roots in West Valley City for nearly 100 years has been purchased from a private equity firm by a group of investors led by James Winder, whose great-great-great-grandfather, John R. Winder, started the dairy in 1880 on a family farm in what is now South Salt Lake.
“I started talking with this prior owner about two years ago. Eventually, we negotiated a price and agreement to buy the business,” Winder, now the company’s chairman and CEO, wrote in an email in which he answered questions from the West Valley City Journal. “The price was right, and I was further motivated to complete the transaction because I see significant upside possibilities for this iconic brand.”
As a result, the business ended up back in the hands of Winder and partners after 20 years under the ownership of Dolphin Capital and then a Utah-based private equity firm.
That brand has been synonymous, especially locally, for decades for milk products that were made even more visible to the public over the years by Winder’s home delivery service, first by horse and carriage and later by trucks and vans.
After its founding 145 years ago, Winder Dairy, as it was known back then, grew on a series of properties owned by various Winder family members and associates starting on the east side of the Salt Lake Valley and eventually settling for good on a farm in the Granger area in today’s West Valley City in the early 1930s. Word spread about the quality and richness of the milk pulled and processed from cows and chilled in cans kept in cold well water, since there was no refrigeration as we know it today.
To reach more customers, Winder launched home delivery by horse in the early years and then by trucks and vans. That lasted all the way until 2019 when delivery ended due to the cost. That occurred 15 years after Winder Dairy was sold to Dolphin Capital in 2004 in part to help the Winders pay off debt accumulated to help grow the company and adapt to changing market and customer trends. The dairy eventually rebranded to become known as Winder Farms because it offered a product line that went beyond just milk-based items.
James Winder is optimistic about the future of Winder Farms despite the fact that some may still remember it as part of a bygone era of the “milkman” bringing glass bottles of fresh milk to doorsteps. He cites a three-fold plan going forward: “Grow Winder’s online presence, which we have already started……….expand into more stores with existing retailers……and generally make our existing products more accessible to our loyal customer base.” Winder products can currently be found at all Smith’s stores in Utah, Harmons, and Associated Food Store locations under the Macey’s, Fresh Market, Dick’s, Dan’s and Lee’s names as well as other independently owned Associated Food Stores markets.
Home delivery is also being resurrected through more contemporary channels. “You can currently get Winder delivered by going to our website and clicking on a link that will take you to a third party like Instacart where you load your e-basket with Winder products and have it delivered within an hour or two,” Winder said. “Today’s online third-party logistics and home delivery expertise is far better than anything we had in the past,” he added.
The Winder family no longer owns the farm and buildings at 4400 West and 4100 South, which are mostly sitting idle. Winder hopes some parts of it can be maintained and restored as a historic or tourist site. “I’d love to find a way to restore the property or go back to it in some way, but I think it would require more than Winder Farms deciding to raise capital,” he said. “It would likely require a combination of business investment, city and community investment, and cooperation from the current landlord in order for such a project to be economically viable. Currently, Winder Farms isn’t big enough to justify the project on its own.”
Winder said the primary objective right now is to let people know that the Winder Farms is alive and back in
local hands.
“A big part of what we are doing is creating awareness that we are still here,.” he said.
“It will likely take many years to do all that we want to do, but so far, since we acquired the business, sales have grown and we seem to be moving in the right direction.”