Oldest family-owned U.S. creamery featured on Good Morning America

Ohio-based Minerva Dairy, which bills itself as America’s oldest family-owned creamery, was featured in July on ABC’s Good Morning America. The segment focused on Minerva’s virtual outreach to students nationwide and was titled, “How one Buttermaker opened their virtual doors to students across the nation.”

Minerva has been making butter for six generations, and co-owner Venae Watts was on GMA to talk about her outreach, as well as life as a mother (her kids are ages 8 to 23), sister, and businesswoman. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, not only did children miss out on the opportunity to not attend class in-person, but they also missed their planned field trips. Venae understood what the loss of hands-on learning experiences meant to those students and wanted to do what she could to help. Venae created virtual tours of her creamery to share with kids over Zoom. From elementary to high schoolers, students of all ages benefitted from hearing from Venae firsthand.