Tillamook County Creamery Association

What does Tillamook County Creamery Association own?

The co-op owns the Tillamook brand and all its product lines, including cheese, ice cream, butter, yogurt, sour cream, cream cheese, and frozen meals. It operates manufacturing plants in Tillamook, Oregon and Decatur, Illinois, plus the Tillamook Creamery visitor attraction.

Is Tillamook publicly traded?

No. It is a farmer-owned cooperative, so ownership sits with its member dairy families rather than public shareholders. There is no stock to buy.

Who founded the cooperative?

Ten independent dairies in Tillamook County, Oregon formed the association in 1909, each contributing $10 to adopt a shared cheddar recipe. The county's dairy tradition itself dates to the 1850s.

Where is the co-op headquartered?

Tillamook County Creamery Association is headquartered in Tillamook, Oregon, on the northern Oregon coast where it was founded.

Who owns Tillamook?

Roughly 60 dairy farming families own the cooperative. The member farms elect a board of directors, which appoints the executive team led by CEO David Booth.

How many employees does the co-op have?

TCCA employs approximately 1,000 to 1,500 people across its plants, corporate offices, and visitor operations, plus the member farmers themselves who are owners rather than employees.

Dairy farming in Tillamook County began in the 1850s, when settlers discovered the wet coastal pastures suited dairy cattle better than crops. To reach Portland markets, the community built the schooner Morning Star in the 1850s; its image became the co-op's lasting logo. In 1909, ten independent dairies each contributed $10 to form the Tillamook County Creamery Association, agreeing on a shared cheddar recipe of just four ingredients that the co-op says it still follows.

For most of the twentieth century, TCCA was a regional processor. Its cheddar sold throughout the Pacific Northwest, and the Tillamook Cheese Factory, later redeveloped as the Tillamook Creamery, became a working plant and tourist attraction that now draws close to a million visitors a year.

The strategic shift to a national brand came under Patrick Criteser, a former Nike and Disney executive who became CEO in 2012. Criteser argued that remaining a western regional player would not generate the stability member farms needed. The co-op invested in brand building and expanded distribution across the Midwest, South, and East Coast, lifting annual sales about 250 percent over a decade past the $1.2 billion mark.

David Booth, a ten-year company veteran who previously ran brand growth and commercialization, succeeded Criteser as president and CEO in 2024. His signature early move was the June 2025 opening of a $65 to $70 million ice cream plant in Decatur, Illinois, the co-op's first owned manufacturing facility outside Oregon. The site is designed to ramp from about 3 million gallons of ice cream in year one to 15.5 million at capacity.

The co-op is a Certified B Corporation under B Lab's audited standard, the strongest external validation of its stewardship program. Its six stewardship commitments cover thriving farms, cows, ecosystems, and communities.

Documented performance in the 2025 report includes 66 percent of total waste diverted from landfills, up from 51 percent the year before, and participation by 100 percent of milk-supplying farms in the FARM Animal Care Program, the industry animal-welfare standard. The co-op donated nearly $1 million to nonprofits working on food security, agricultural advocacy, and children's health. These program metrics are self-reported; the B Corp certification itself is independently assessed.

Tillamook cheeses have placed repeatedly in the American Cheese Society and US Championship Cheese Contest competitions, and consumer publications regularly rank the brand's cheddar and ice cream among category leaders. The Tillamook Creamery is consistently listed among Oregon's top tourist attractions. The co-op's B Corp certification and its Decatur plant opening were covered by Bloomberg and trade press in 2025 as markers of its national growth.

The co-op has faced periodic criticism on two fronts. Environmental advocates in Oregon have pressed dairy operations, including Tillamook-area farms, over manure management and water quality, issues addressed through co-op stewardship programs rather than resolved by litigation. The brand has also drawn occasional criticism that its national expansion relies on milk from outside Tillamook County, a tension with its county-of-origin marketing; the co-op is transparent that contracted regional milk supplements member supply. No major regulatory penalties or product safety recalls have been reported as of late 2026.