Gossner Foods is a food and drink brand founded in Logan, Utah, in 1966.
In 1930 a train ticket from New York to Wisconsin left Edwin Gossner with enough change for two apples. The family farm near Waldkirch, in eastern Switzerland, had gone to his brother August. In Wisconsin another brother, Ernest, taught him Swiss cheese, which Gossner Foods still makes in Logan.
In 1937 a tornado cut the power at the Wisconsin plant he managed, and while he was out trying to restore it, the plant burned down. By 1941 he had found Cache Valley, which he called the Little Switzerland of the Rockies, and a cooperative gave him $5,000 to turn an old sugar plant in Amalga into a Swiss cheese plant. By the 1960s, Visit Utah says, it was the largest Swiss cheese factory in the world. Switzerland had been outdone by a sugar plant.
He incorporated Gossner Foods in Logan in 1966. A milk plant followed in 1982, and its boxed milk keeps for months without refrigeration and travels with U.S. troops. The company says it makes about 20 percent of America's Swiss cheese, and great-granddaughter Kristan Gibbs Earl has run it since 2018. The shop beside the plant sells cheese curds that squeak. Two apples went a long way.
According to Dolores Wheeler, Gossner milk landed in Napoleon Dynamite because the filmmaker offered to put it in his 2004 movie if the company gave milk to his cast and crew.
