About Cruze Farm
Cruze Farm is a family dairy farm in Knoxville, Tennessee.
We milk Jersey cows and make fresh churned ice cream with milk from our herd. We pasteurize and bottle real churned buttermilk, whole milk, light milk, chocolate milk, coffee milk, and seasonal flavored milks. Our cows are on pasture 365 days a year and are never given hormones. Our milk is not homogenized so the cream rises to the top. You will find our milk mostly in Knoxville at Three Rivers Market, Whole Foods, and locally owned shops. Our dairy is a state approved and inspected milk processing plant. Several years ago we placed a conservation easement on our farm and hope that it will now be "a farm forever."
OUR HISTORY
Cruze Farm was established April 21, 1980 when Earl and Cheri married. Earl was a fourth generation dairy farmer dreaming of bottling milk with his name on it; Cheri was a 29 year old bachelorette dreaming of owning a horse. They met ice skating at the Ice Chalet in Bearden and had a whirlwind wedding three months later. Instead of going on a honeymoon, they came straight back from the courthouse and milked the cows. Within a few years, they had built a humble processing plant behind the parlor and were bottling milk and selling to whoever would buy, usually individual home customers. It wasn’t until 1988 that they got their first real milk account with the local grocers at the Knoxville Food Co-op (now known as Three Rivers Market).
Slowly, Earl and Cheri built a business. In 1992, they rented a spot in the East Town farmers’ market building, where today there is a Target. In this new spot, they opened a scoop shop, selling hand-dipped ice cream that they had churned on the farm. When the farmers’ market closed down eight years later, they focused on their pasteurized milk business and really began to grow their buttermilk and whole milk sales.
After Colleen graduated from the University of Tennessee, she joined in to help Cruze Farm grow by finding stores who would buy Cruze Farm milk (Magpies and Old City Java were two of her first successful sales). The farm bought a food truck to sell ice cream out of and Colleen’s mom ordered a stove for the truck so she could sell food during the colder seasons. Colleen met Manjit cooking at the Bistro on Gay Street in 2010 and he became the first Cruze Farm cook. Colleen’s goal was to sell all the surplus milk the farm produced and opening an ice cream store was ultimately the best way.
In 2016, Colleen and Manjit opened the first Cruze Farm pop-up on Union Ave.
In 2017, they opened the second pop-up on Gay Street.
On October 5, Asbury Ice Cream opened as the first permanent location.
On January 19, 2018 (Dolly’s B-Day ;)), the Pizza Barn opened.
On August 10, 2018, the Gay Street location opened in the Miller’s Building. In October 2020, we opened our Sevierville location. In May 2022, we opened our Morristown location.
In a lot of ways, Cruze Farm is very much the same as it was thirty years ago. The process is the same. The herd is still jersey cows. Most importantly, the values that Cruze Farm stands for haven’t changed, because these are values that Earl and Cheri hold dear. We sell milk, ice cream and pizza—and we make sure it is delicious—but our main goal is to connect with people and build community through our dairy farm.
