Setting the table
From Mitchell Foods to Cliffstar — and the food, people who made it possible
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Editor’s note: This is the second of two parts.
In Part One, the story followed the region from its vineyards and farm fields through Welch’s, local preserving and canning, Bedford Products and Red Wing. Those enterprises were not isolated successes. Together, they helped create a regional pool of knowledge in growing, processing, packaging and transportation -- the foundation for the companies that followed.
Innovation, Ice Cream and the People Behind the Companies
Mitchell Foods adds another dimension. The Fredonia company became involved in frozen foods, whipped toppings and non-dairy products, including PolyPerk, a non-dairy creamer. Some remembered claims about PolyPerk’s formulation and health-oriented marketing still require primary-source confirmation, so they should remain part of the continuing research rather than be presented as settled fact.
Few local names stir memories quite like Dunkirk Ice Cream. The company began in the early twentieth century and grew into a substantial local manufacturer and employer. Ken Johnson, who began working there one year after high school and eventually became CEO of Fieldbrook Foods, remembers company president Bill Gorman in memorable terms: “the smartest man I ever worked for.”
The Dunkirk operation survived ownership and name changes. Fieldbrook was acquired by Wells Enterprises of Iowa in 2019. Ferrero later acquired Wells Enterprises, and a $425 million expansion announced for the Dunkirk manufacturing complex has carried the city’s ice-cream tradition into a new generation.
The names changed. The tradition of making food in Dunkirk continued.
Cliffstar and the Power of Local Expertise
Perhaps no story better demonstrates how far Chautauqua County’s food and beverage expertise could travel than Cliffstar.
The Star family’s local beverage roots preceded Cliffstar, including involvement in Fredonia wine production. In 1971, Stanley Star and his uncle Leo Star created Cliffstar, which grew into one of North America’s leading private-label beverage manufacturers. When Cott announced its agreement to acquire Cliffstar in 2010, it described the Dunkirk company as the leading private-label manufacturer of shelf-stable juices, with approximately 1,200 employees and eleven U.S. facilities.
That success did not occur in a vacuum. Cliffstar grew in a community that already possessed generations of knowledge about grapes, juice, food processing, bottling, manufacturing and transportation.
Seen in that context, Cliffstar was both an extraordinary local success and a continuation of something Chautauqua County had been building for generations.
The Connections Are the Story
The more this history is examined, the more apparent the connections become.
Growers supplied processors. Processors provided markets for growers. Local residents moved from one food company to another, carrying knowledge and experience with them. Entrepreneurs developed products. Families built businesses. Some companies were sold, some disappeared and others became part of corporations known around the world.
But the expertise remained.
Perhaps the greatest product of this regional food-and-beverage ecosystem was not jelly, peanut butter, wine, juice or ice cream. It was people – farmers, production workers, mechanics, truck drivers, chemists, engineers, salespeople, accountants and executives whose skills moved through the community from one enterprise to another.
Preserving the Memories
This project began with a simple realization: the people who lived this history are getting older, and too many of their stories have never been recorded.
Documents and newspaper archives can tell us when a company opened, when a plant was sold or how much a business produced. They cannot always preserve the conversation at the lunch table, the story behind a piece of machinery, the reason an executive made a decision, the farmer’s memory of delivering a crop or an employee’s recollection of the person who gave him his first opportunity.
That is why I have been trying to bring documented history together with clearly identified firsthand recollections. Dates need to be checked. Family memories must be distinguished from independently documented facts. Photographs need to be identified and permissions established. The work is continuing.
Can You Help?
This history belongs to the community, and pieces of it are undoubtedly sitting today in attics, basements, scrapbooks, photo albums and people’s memories.
If you or a member of your family worked for one of Chautauqua County’s farms, grape operations, canneries, dairies, wineries, food processors or beverage companies, I would like to hear your story. Old employee photographs, product labels, advertisements, company newsletters, bottles, jars, boxes, correspondence and firsthand recollections may contain pieces of history that cannot be found anywhere else.
The goal is larger than nostalgia. It is preservation.
For more than a century, the farms, families and factories of Chautauqua County produced food and beverages that traveled far beyond our county lines. Thousands of local people helped make that possible.
It is a story worth preserving – and there are still people among us who can help tell it.
Tom Muldowney is compiling an ongoing history of the agriculture, food and beverage industries of Chautauqua County. He welcomes photographs, documents, memorabilia and firsthand recollections from people connected with the county’s farms and food and beverage businesses.
Cell: 716-830-4774
Email: tommuldowney7@gmail.com