Maker of unusual riverside cheese snacks is among three in the region to benefit from dairy innovation grants

A Riverbank business is finding its way into the busy cheese sector with intriguing flavors on a mozzarella-like product.

The cheese chunks come in 3.5-ounce snack packs with options including smoked, strawberry and wasabi (a Japanese horseradish). Calabrian chile and habanero/mango versions are coming, founder and CEO Stefen Choy said during a May 31 tour.

This is clearly not your kid’s string cheese, a much more common product in the San Joaquin Valley’s massive dairy industry.

“(Consumers) want products that are tasty, convenient and good for you,” Choy said. “But they don’t always want old things.”

Cheese Bits just received a $500,000 federal grant to help it grow. It now employs five people full-time and ten people part-time. The goal is to have everyone full time at some point, Choy said.

Smaller subsidies were given to two other dairy producers in the region. Hilmar Cheese Co. was awarded $40,000 to upgrade its visitor center. An additional $40,450 will go toward adding yogurt drinks at Stuyt Dairy Farmstead Cheese Co. near Escalon.

The Mexican cheese maker arrived early

Cheese Bits has been operating since 2021 in a small building on Santa Fe Street in downtown Riverbank. It was the original home in 1996 of Rizo Lopez Foods, a Mexican cheese producer that in 2012 moved to a much larger plant in Modesto.

The master cheesemaker of the new company is Moises Berber, who worked for Rizo Lopez. He puts local milk in weekly batches of mozzamini, a hybrid of mozzarella and provolone. He doesn’t need to age.

Some of the cheese is made into sticks, about 20 per package and designed to be stretched. Some are sold in grape-sized “tots,” sold by the dozen. The rest becomes “pearls”, even smaller.

The natural and smoked options come in all three forms. Wasabi and strawberry are pearl only. The fruity flavor is a seasonal offering during the winter holidays.

Wasabi and strawberry producers provide these flavors. An on-site smoker, fueled with hickory wood, imparts the other flavor.

“We adhere to the old way of smoking, instead of using liquid smoke used by other companies,” Choy said.

Raley’s and O’Brien’s are among the retailers

Cheese Bits are sold in approximately 2,000 stores nationwide. Stanislaus County residents can find them at several Raley’s locations, both at O’Brien’s Market in Modesto and at Nob Hill in Newman. They sold for $4.99 during a recent visit to O’Brien’s.

The grant came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture through the Pacific Coast Coalition Dairy Business Innovation Initiative. In May, it awarded a total of $5.87 million to six states.

Cheese Bits plans to use its $500,000 to increase its cold storage capacity, automate its packaging and for other needs.

Milk is Stanislaus County’s primary agricultural product. This generated approximately $1.13 billion in gross revenue for farmers in 2022, according to the agriculture commissioner’s latest report.

But dairy producers often have tight profit margins, in part because of a decline in consumption of liquid milk (cartons and jugs). Cheese, ice cream, yogurt and other value-added products fared better.

Learn more about Hilmar Cheese and Stuyt Dairy

Hilmar Cheese was started by several dairy farmers in 1984 and now has the world’s largest factory on Lander Avenue.

The visitor center includes a café, retail food sales and cheese industry exhibits. The USDA grant will refresh displays with an emphasis on dairy careers and nutritional value.

Hilmar makes a variety of types of cheese for labeling by other companies. It added a plant in Texas in 2007 and is completing another in Kansas.

Stuyt makes Dutch and a few other types of cheese on Mariposa Road, about four miles northwest of Escalon. The founders, Rick and Ansally Stuyt, immigrated from the Netherlands and started making cheese in 2015.

It is a “farmer’s” cheese, meaning that the milk comes from the owners’ cows. The land has belonged to the family since 1965.

The USDA grant will fund the purchase of machines to fill and cap drinkable yogurt packages. It’s a Dutch favorite that also contains pudding.