EUGENE, Ore. — The Springfield Creamery has been a family run business for the last 65 years. Today, the company's main headquarters are in Eugene, but it first started out as a small milk bottling company in 1960. That year, shortly after founders Chuck and Sue Kesey were married, the couple opened the creamery and started off by bottling milk.
"When we went to school, we drank the milk on our trays that our parents bottled in the creamery," Sheryl Kesey Thompson said.
Kesey Thompson is the daughter of Chuck and Sue and co-owners of the company. Her dad Chuck had a background in dairy science, graduating from Oregon State University. The plans for the creamery included more than just bottling milk.
"I think they would tell you it was never their long-term goal to bottle milk," Kesey Thompson said.
Chuck loved a little-known probiotic named acidophilus used to keep or improve the good bacteria in the body. It was a good bacteria that wasn't being used in foods, but instead in veterinary medicine. Chuck knew the gut health benefits could provide for humans and wanted to include it in yogurt. His dream would come true in 1969 when the company had an opening for a bookkeeper.
"I applied for the job, and they hired me on the spot," Nancy Van Brasch Hamren said.
Van Brasch Hamren, however, was more than just a bookkeeper.
"I was the yogurt maker at the creamery," she said.
By now, you've probably figured out that Nancy Van Brasch Hamren is the Nancy in Nancy's Yogurt, but she wasn't the one that gave it the name.
Chuck used her recipe and added his probiotics to it. By 1970, the company started selling it in natural food stores throughout the area, except not many knew what the probiotic was.
"You had to do a little educating for people. You had to tell them what acidophilus was and why this was different," Nancy said
When stores wanted more of the product, they didn't have a name to call it by, until one co-op owner called, and Nancy picked up.
"She called up and she was placing her order for milk and things and she said, 'Give me some of that 'Nancy's Yogurt!' and Chuck and Sue went, I like that. It resonated."
The name stuck. The yogurt made with the probiotic was known as Nancy's Yogurt.
"It's an honor; it's a huge honor." Nancy said.
In the early 1970s, it was still a mom-and-pop business and if it wanted to survive, it needed to expand and distribute its product further out. Hugh Cregg III heard about the product and offered to deliver the product from Springfield to the Bay Area, where he lived. They called themselves Natural Foods Express.
Cregg is better known as Huey Lewis, the lead singer of the 1980s rock band Huey Lewis and the News. It was in the early '70s Lewis and his business partner would make overnight trips from the Bay Area to Springfield, load up the yogurt and then drive back to make their deliveries.
"It was crazy times, we worked from dawn 'til dark," Lewis told KGW in an interview from his ranch in Montana. "I was playing music at night and getting up at 4 o'clock in the morning and putting up orders and getting them out and doing the distribution thing and then take a nap in the afternoon and play shows. I was putting my band together at night."
Lewis said it was during one of these trips he recorded one of his many hit songs, "I wrote 'Workin' For a Livin' while delivering yogurt in Berkeley. There's no question. I remember the exact moment I had the idea."
Despite the distribution efforts, the creamery fell on hard times and was having trouble making ends meet and when a tax bill came due, Chuck and Sue didn't have the money.
"By 1972, my parents found themselves definitely in tight times," Kesey Thompson said.
Chuck had an idea to save the business and called a mutual friend of his brother's, noted author Ken Kesey.
"My dad went and asked The Grateful Dead if they would do a benefit for the creamery," Kesey Thompson said.
The Grateful Dead said yes, and on August 27 in 1972, the creamery held a benefit concert in an open field under the blazing hot sun in Veneta, Oregon.
"All of the instruments are going out of tune," said Kit Kesey, Chuck and Sue Kesey's son and co-owner of the creamery. "The entire crowd took their clothes off. It was the nakedest thing I have seen to date."
The concert was a hit; tickets were only $3 in advance and $3.50 at the entrance and they sold out quickly. To save money, the tickets were made using 'Nancy's Yogurt' labels.
"That's a phenomenal piece of the creamery's history right there," Kesey Thompson said.
The concert was such a success, it raised enough money to pay off the estimated $14,000 dollar tax bill.
"Rock and roll saves the yogurt again," Kesey Thompson said.
Over the years, Nancy's would expand and add more products. Today, their products can be found in all the major retailers and natural food stores across the United States. The company, as it was started more than 60 years ago, is still family owned and operated.