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For six decades, the businesswoman helped build the Springfield Creamery and its Nancy's brand. "She didn't just wear a lot of hats, she wore all the hats," her daughter said.
Sue Kesey, the co-founder and former CEO of Springfield Creamery who helped revolutionize the American yogurt industry by introducing live probiotics, died Monday, Aug. 18. She was 86.
Kesey was a pioneering businesswoman who — with her husband, Chuck Kesey — built Springfield Creamery from a small local milk-bottling operation in 1960 into a nationally recognized producer of cultured dairy foods. The company has remained independent and family-run through its history.
The Keseys were groundbreakers in 1970 when Springfield Creamery became the first U.S. company to add live probiotics to yogurt. Probiotics are beneficial microbes that live in our guts.
Springfield Creamery products are sold under the Nancy’s Probiotic Foods brand, and they are available at major retailers nationwide, including Whole Foods Market, Natural Grocers, Sprouts, Kroger, Safeway and Albertsons.
In an announcement from the company, Sheryl Kesey Thompson, daughter of Sue and Chuck and co-owner at Springfield Creamery along with her brother Kit Kesey, said, “Our mom spent more than six decades pouring her heart into Springfield Creamery — not to build a big company, but to care for the people and communities connected to it. She valued employees, farmers, growers and natural food partners as family, and she cared about every container of yogurt that left the creamery. She didn’t just wear a lot of hats, she wore all the hats, and we are so grateful to carry on the legacy that she and our dad created together.”
Industry pioneers
Throughout the country during the late 1960s and early 1970s, many people were creating natural food companies to embrace newfound awareness of diet and health, moving away from processed foods toward organic, whole ingredients.
The Keseys got married right after college, in 1960. Kesey was a graduate of Oregon State University, where she studied business and secretarial sciences. Chuck majored in dairy science at OSU. His father was the manager of a Eugene-based creamery, so Chuck had dairy experience. The two of them together created a powerhouse business partnership.
At first, the Keseys provided milk for the Springfield School District and home deliveries of milk to local neighborhoods. In 1969, a woman named Nancy Hamren moved from San Francisco to Eugene to be the creamery’s bookkeeper. And, serendipitously, Hamren had experience making yogurt.
The creamery started making yogurt, and called it Nancy’s Yogurt. Chuck had heard about adding the probiotic L. acidophilus to yogurt for health reasons, and no other creameries were using it in their products at that time.
In a 2023 interview for Eugene Magazine, Sue Kesey said at that time people in general were more interested in natural, less processed foods. Many people were making food products, but there was little practical infrastructure for transporting foods, especially dairy products.
“At that point, the entire infrastructure of natural foods — retailing, distributing, trucking, manufacturing — all of that started coming together and was very exciting. Those were interesting times, and we were just going along with it,” she said.
The Keseys joked in that 2023 interview that they named the yogurt after Hamren because Nancy’s Yogurt sounded tastier than Chuck’s Yogurt.
Kesey said that the creamery started with a focus on milk, but all along Chuck wanted to make cultured dairy products, like yogurt.
“Our yogurt went to market about 1970, so we were one of the earliest natural foods producers here,” she said.
Nancy’s brand products now include butter, five yogurt products, kefir, cottage cheese, sour cream and cream cheese.
Overcoming challenges
The creamery was not always successful. In 1972, when the creamery was facing financial hardships, the Keseys, who had San Francisco connections, reached out to a popular band from the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood called the Grateful Dead and asked them to play a benefit concert for the company. They did, and Aug. 27 will mark the 53rd anniversary of the concert.
In 1994, a fire nearly destroyed the facility. Kesey led rebuilding efforts.
Community impact
Beyond her business achievements, Kesey was deeply involved in her community, serving on the board of Mainstream Housing in Eugene and as a member of the Oregon Country Fair food committee. She was known as a mentor and collaborator within the natural foods industry.
“Many of those friends, a core group of 10 to 12, stayed at the creamery their entire careers,” said Kit Kesey in the announcement. “That is so exceptional, and a testimonial to how my mom, who was leading the company, cared for friends, employees and their families.”
Personal life
Kesey and her husband were married for nearly 65 years, and she was a devoted mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. The announcement said she particularly enjoyed retreats to the Oregon Coast with her husband.
Author Ken Kesey, known for his books “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Sometimes a Great Notion,” is Chuck’s brother.
Sue Kesey’s children, Kit and Sheryl, now lead the company alongside grandchildren Taylor, Blake and Grant Thompson. Younger grandchildren Hendrix and Wilson Kesey also carry forward Kesey’s values of “love and integrity,” said the announcement.
Plans for a memorial celebration will be announced.