Cabot Creamery
Farmer-owned cheddar, butter and dairy out of Vermont since 1919
✅ Made in USA
Our assessment
Company details
Where Cabot Creamery products are made
Member farms, not commodity milk
Cabot Creamery is a cooperative of American farm families who own the business outright. Its published farm list runs across Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Maine and Connecticut — many of them open to visitors with farm stores, tours and stays.
A Vermont operation
The cooperative is headquartered at 193 Home Farm Way in Waitsfield, Vermont, and runs its two retail stores in Waterbury Center and Hardwick. Vermont is not a marketing motif here; it is where the business lives.
Farmer-owned economics
Cabot Creamery states that its farmers own both the Cabot and McCadam brands and that one hundred percent of the proceeds return to them. It is a Certified B Corporation, which subjects that claim to outside verification.
Cabot Creamery is a farmer-owned American dairy cooperative — legally Agri-Mark, Inc. d/b/a Cabot Creamery Cooperative, headquartered at 193 Home Farm Way, Waitsfield, Vermont. Its milk comes from member farms across Vermont, New York and the rest of New England, and it has been operating on that basis since 1919. One thing to be precise about: Cabot Creamery does not publish a plant-by-plant manufacturing list on its consumer site, so this profile’s Made in USA label rests on its structure as a US farmer-owned cooperative processing US member-farm milk rather than on a published facility roster. Check the individual listing if origin matters to you on a specific item.
The story
In 1919, ninety-four farm families in Cabot, Vermont did the arithmetic and reached an uncomfortable conclusion: individually, none of them had any leverage over what their milk was worth. Together, they might. So they formed a cooperative — not to build a brand, but to make sure they could keep farming.
More than a century later the arithmetic still holds. Cabot Creamery describes farm families who have been at it every single day since 1919, and the cooperative still belongs to them. The award-winning cheddar that most people know the name for is a downstream consequence of that arrangement, not the reason it exists.
The cooperative operates today as Agri-Mark, Inc. doing business as Cabot Creamery Cooperative, from Waitsfield, Vermont. Its farmers own both the Cabot and McCadam brands. Its member farms are scattered across Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Maine and Connecticut, and a striking number of them are open to the public — farm stores, tours, scoop shops, even overnight stays.
Cabot Creamery is a Certified B Corporation and describes itself as part of a movement toward an inclusive, equitable and regenerative economy. For a business founded by dairy farmers looking to survive the 1919 milk market, that is a reasonably direct line.
Why they matter
American dairy has consolidated brutally. The number of US dairy farms has fallen by more than ninety percent since the middle of the last century, and most of the survivors sell into a commodity system where they are price takers with no claim on what happens to their milk after the tanker leaves.
Cabot Creamery matters because it is the counterexample that has lasted. A cooperative that has been farmer-owned continuously since 1919 is proof that the alternative structure is not a nostalgia project — it works, at scale, in a category where almost nothing else survived intact.
For a buyer, the difference is where the money lands. Buying a block of Cabot Creamery cheddar sends the proceeds back to the farm families who own the cooperative rather than to shareholders who have never seen the barn. That is an unusually short and unusually legible supply chain for a supermarket product.
Shop Cabot Creamery products
Browse Cabot Creamery cheddar, butter and dairy available now in the Buy American store.
Shop all Cabot Creamery products → Visit Cabot Creamery website →
Frequently asked questions
Who owns Cabot Creamery?
The farm families themselves. Cabot Creamery is a farmer-owned cooperative, legally Agri-Mark, Inc. doing business as Cabot Creamery Cooperative, and it states that one hundred percent of proceeds go back to its farmers.
When was Cabot Creamery founded?
1919, when 94 farm families in Cabot, Vermont formed a cooperative to protect their livelihoods.
Where is Cabot Creamery headquartered?
193 Home Farm Way, Waitsfield, Vermont. The cooperative also runs retail stores in Waterbury Center and Hardwick, Vermont.
Can you visit a Cabot Creamery farm?
Yes. A number of member farms across Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Maine and Connecticut are open to the public with farm stores, markets, tours and in some cases overnight stays.