Continental Dairy Facilities Southwest LLC will begin selling Majestic butter in United Supermarkets and Amigos in the region on February 15.
Continental Dairy began production in Littlefield in 2019 producing non-fat dry milk and cream in bulk. The butter plant has been running for approximately two years and started with producing bulk butter before beginning production on conventional butter.
General manager, Steve Cooper, explained that Majestic butter is recognized as a Go-Texan product because the raw materials are sourced in Texas and the butter is produced in Texas.
“It’s Texas milk producing Texas cream, producing Texas butter,” Cooper said. “So, we basically pull the cream and churn it into butter. So, we’ve got Texas dairyman here that are producing the raw material for us to take this into butter produced here.”
Majestic butter will be available in a salted and an unsalted option. “We do salted and we do what we call an unsalted butter,” Cooper said. “It has a culture flavor to it. So, we run salted and unsalted in, in both our conventional majestic and our organic.”
Organic Majestic butter was in Whole Foods stores for a short period of time but will not be in United Supermarkets or Amigos. Cooper says he hopes the conventional butter will do well enough in stores to expand retail sale to organic Majestic butter.
Cooper explained the butter is made in a European style. This gives the butter a better body and texture as well as a good flavor. “Not too many people in the industry do it that way these days,” Cooper said. “It’s more time consuming. It’s more capital intensive, but it does make a better quality butter. That’s the way pretty much all European butters are made, but in the US we’ve kind of gotten away from that. So, we do it that way and that really kind of sets us apart from that standpoint.”
The cream is tanked and held at a set temperature for 12 hours to get crystallization of the fat. The cream is then taken to a churn to be made into butter. The butter is taken to a silo that creates a large ball of butter.
After this, the butter is taken to bulk operations or to the print machines. The print machines create quarter pound sticks, wraps them in paper and puts the sticks in cartons.
Continental Dairy receives 80 to 85 loads of milk per day and has been producing an average of 250k and 300k pounds of butter every day. The machines can produce 500k pounds of butter per day.
“We’re really happy to get this product out on the shelves and introduce our name,” Cooper said. “It’s a really good product. It’s an award-winning butter.”