Randy Roecker milks a small dairy herd in Wisconsin and is the Innovation Committee Chairman at Dairy Management Inc.  Roecker tells Brownfield one success story is their partnership with Domino’s Pizza. “What’s pizza without cheese? So, when their theme is hungry for more, they want more pizza, more sales, and that means more cheese for the dairy industry.”

DMI has helped develop menu items for McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut International, all generating more utilization of dairy products. “Another one we work with is Raising Cane’s, and that’s a very fast growing restaurant chain right now, so we use a lot of dairy in, actually, the batter that they use on their chicken tenders.”

Some of the new foods were so popular that the restaurants made them a permanent menu item.  Roecker says the checkoff’s culinary creators continue working with the franchises to feature more dairy products.