Why We Started Cool Earth Creamery
I spent almost thirty years as a civil engineer watching climate change take things apart.
I saw it on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina — entire neighborhoods erased, grandmothers picking through rubble where their homes had been searching for some small relic of their life before the storm. I saw it in northeastern Afghanistan. In one of the most deeply impoverished and remote places on earth, I found a population already living with the consequences of a changing climate - drought, severe flooding, failing slopes, and failing crops layered underneath an active war zone. I saw it in Montana — fires burning longer and hotter, dams straining under conditions they were never designed for.
When retirement came into view I looked at my portfolio and asked myself a question I couldn't shake. What is the value of a strong retirement plan in an increasingly unstable climate? I didn't have a good answer. But I wanted to do my part in helping answer that question.
What is the value of anything we are building now if we are not also focused on building a livable future?
The research kept pointing to the same place — shifting toward plant-based foods is one of the most meaningful things we can do to address climate change. But the plant-based food market had a problem. It was full of compromise. Overly processed. Missing the mark in texture and flavor. Asking people to accept less in exchange for doing the right thing.
I'd put myself through engineering school working in restaurants. I knew food. And I knew that tradeoff was the reason plant-based adoption wasn't moving faster.
So I thought like an engineer. If I could build the infrastructure locally — process our own oat milk from organically grown regional grain, control the process from ingredient to packaging — I could make something that changed people's minds. Not by arguing with them. By feeding them something they couldn't argue with.
We started in 2019. Built our Missoula facility. Launched our oat milk in 2022. Spent two years developing an innovative, one-of-a-kind dairy-free gelatothat doesn't ask you to sacrifice flavor for your ethics. Every container leaves our facility in compostable or reusable packaging.