History of Innovation

For several years, factory workers on the second shift at the Sargento facility in Plymouth, Wisconsin, had a tradition of pooling their money to buy Powerball tickets whenever the jackpot got above $100 million. There were about 100 employees in the pool on August 5, 2006 when they won the largest jackpot in Wisconsin history: $208.6 million. After taxes, each participant would receive about $670,000. The winners would become known as the “100 Miracles.”

The mutual regard between the winners and Sargento was evident in the way they responded to the win. CEO Lou Gentine, Sr., arranged for all the winning employees to get professional advice, support and guidance in how to handle their newfound wealth, all of it provided at the company’s expense. The employees, meanwhile, remained with the company despite that newfound wealth. On the day they collected the check, only four people from the pool even planned to leave Sargento, and by 2012, six years later, Lou Gentine estimated that over 75 percent of the winners were still with the company. The special relationship that came from the company’s longstanding philosophy, “Hire good people and treat them like family,” had never been clearer.

Sargento introduced its primary burgundy and prominent horizontal Sargento logo. As the dairy case proliferated in offerings and colors, Sargento created a uniform look and principal color across its product lines to help consumers find Sargento products.

MooTown Snackers Cheese & Sticks were a convenient, portable snack for kids on the go. Available in single-serving or perforated multipacks, the cracker snacks included cracker sticks with a dippable cheese sauce and required no refrigeration. Sargento later expanded its MooTown Snackers products to include Cheeze & Crackers and S’Mores spreadable flavor varieties.

The National Cheese Institute (NCI) Laureate Award is one of the most prestigious honors in the cheese industry, given to only one recipient per year. Leonard received the award in recognition of his lifetime of contributions to the cheese industry, including the development of vacuumsealed natural cheeses, packaged shredded cheeses, the peg board display and the resealable closure for cheese. Leonard accepted the award in person at the NCI’s annual meeting in Chicago.

Amid a boom for homemade Italian and Mexican foods — a boom Sargento products had helped fuel — the company introduced Sargento Recipe Blends. The new product line combined different kinds of natural cheese commonly called for in Mexican and Italian recipes, allowing consumers to combine authentic taste with cooking convenience. The product line initially launched with two options. The 6 Cheese Italian blend contained Mozzarella, Provolone, Parmesan, Romano, Fontina and Asiago, while the 4 Cheese Mexican blend featured Cheddar, Monterey Jack, Queso Quesadilla and Asadero Mexican cheeses. The debut products’ success would lead the company to continue developing and refining multi-blend cheeses for recipes.

The new Sargento logo was more than a cosmetic update. It was a recognition of several major changes the company had initiated in recent years, including a reduction in the amount of plastic used in packaging, the introduction of several new products and the launch of a landmark multiyear program to increase efficiency and quality in company operations. According to market research, steps like these contributed to consumers’ perception of Sargento as a different type of cheese company, one that they associated with high-quality products, European origins and attention to detail, among other things. Taking all of these developments into account, the company decided it was time for a new look that recognized how much the brand had grown and better reflected the way consumers saw Sargento products.

Leonard Gentine, Sr. passed away on August 19 at age 81, following a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. He left behind his loving wife, Dolores, four grown children and their spouses, fifteen grandchildren, one great grandchild and Sargento, the company he had built for them. The year of his passing, the cheese company he launched out of a carriage house 43 years earlier garnered $364 million in net revenue while remaining a family-run operation, ready to carry on the principles he had established.

By staggering slices of cheese like shingles on a roof, Sargento made it easy for customers to extract a single slice of cheese from the stack without fumbling or tearing. Previously, sliced cheese was stacked one on top of the other. Shingled packing changed how Sargento packaged sliced cheese, making it more convenient.

With new technology all it took to open a package of Sargento cheese was a gentle pull on an easy-to-open and close slider. Sargento was the first cheese company to use the feature, and it was so groundbreaking that the company won a WorldStar Award for Packaging Excellence, the most prestigious award in packaging.

Sargento became the official cheese of the Green Bay Packers. The Packers beginning of a new venture for Sargento and Wisconsin sports. In the following years, the company continued to expand its partnership with the Packers and would build new partnerships with the Milwaukee Brewers, Milwaukee Bucks and others.

True to the company’s values, Sargento connected these sports partnerships to its philanthropy through programs that make Wisconsin communities stronger by providing hunger relief and affordable housing.

Sargento updated its fleet of semi-trailers with vinyl siding designed to make the vehicles resemble giant blocks of cheese. According to then-CEO Lou Gentine, “The re-designed siding reinforces the fact that our family's passion is cheese and all we do is cheese.”

The first truck to bear the new cheese design made its debut on a road trip to the North Island Naval Station in Coronado, California. The USS Ronald Reagan was returning to North Island, its home port, and the truck carried a 550-pound replica of the ship made out of Sargento Cheddar cheese to greet the nearly 8,000 members of the ship’s crew, family and friends.

Wanting to combine the flavor profiles of handcrafted, small-batch cheeses with the quality and affordability of its own natural cheese offerings, Sargento developed the Artisan Blends line. Each bag contained Sargento products combined with cheeses made by small artisan cheesemakers who were identified by name on the front of the package.

Sargento changed its logo from the Leaning Tower of Pisa one of its early years to a crown icon placed above the Sargento name. The logo would see several variations over the years, including adding a circle and two sets of parallel lines on each side. However, the crown remained consistent. The Sargento crown logo was used to represent Sargento Inc. well into the 1990s.

Many of the company’s early advertisements featured a whole cast of hand-drawn cartoon characters, including Sammy Sargento. A military man carrying a sword, the character may have been a reference to the Spanish translation of Sargento, meaning sergeant. Sammy was created by Margie Stroebel, the wife of future Sargento president Charles Stroebel and sister-in-law to Leonard Gentine. The happy mascot would promote Sargento cheeses well into the 1970s.

Leonard Gentine, Sr. spent years searching for his calling before he found the cheese business. Since the late 1930s, he had owned and operated a funeral parlor in Plymouth, Wisconsin, with his wife Dolores while pursuing several side businesses, including an ambulance service and raising minks and nutrias. His enterprises helped him make connections and establish a reputation as an honorable businessman, but none became what he truly wanted: an operation so successful it could be an enduring family business.

In 1949, an encounter with a friend at a poker game would put him on the right path. The friend asked Leonard to procure some cheese gift boxes for the holidays. In the course of pursuing the project, Leonard learned about the cheese industry and discovered an untapped market potential for “exotic” Italian cheeses like mozzarella and provolone. He started a mail-order cheese business to realize that potential. Run out of an old carriage house on his property and heavily dependent on the contributions of family and friends, the business moved 5,000 units by the end of its first year. Its success would lead Leonard to deeper and deeper involvement in the cheese business until 1953, when he founded Sargento, which would become the family business he had always sought.

Sargento cofounders Joseph Sartori and Leonard Gentine, Sr. were close personal friends and effective business partners, but Leonard’s ultimate goal had always been to run a family business, something he could pass down to his children. In 1964, with Sargento doing well, Leonard asked Joe to sell his stake in the company to him. After Joe graciously agreed, Leonard put everything on the line to borrow the $150,000 needed to meet a fair purchase price. As a result of the deal, Joe collected a staggering fifteenfold return on his initial $10,000 investment and remained with the company as an advisor, while Leonard had the satisfaction of knowing that in Sargento he finally had the family business he had always wanted. Joe and Leonard remained friends for the rest of their lives.

As Leonard Gentine’s mail-order cheese business finished its first year of operations as an astonishing success, he decided to expand by converting the carriage house on his property into a specialty retail store, the Plymouth Cheese Counter. The store featured a walk-in cooler, free samples and a guidebook to cheeses, all of which helped the people of Plymouth branch out beyond the familiar to try cheeses from all over the world.

The brick-and-mortar business thrived, and in time Leonard would come to believe the demand for high-quality natural cheeses could sustain something bigger than a small specialty store. This belief led him to begin purchasing, manufacturing and marketing his own cheeses, and in 1953 to launch Sargento with the mission of spreading his wares to grocery stores so that even more people could discover his products.

Always looking to make life easier, Sargento offered customers cracker-ready cheese slices with Cracker Snacks, available in varieties like Swiss, Pimento and Brick. Ready to entertain, Cracker Snacks were packaged in a handy serving tray.

The company’s use of peg bars to hold up its products revolutionized how cheese was displayed in grocery stores. Previously, cheeses were usually displayed on their backs on a dairy case shelf, which meant only the bottom end of the package was visible and shoppers’ eyes tended to wander right past the product. Leonard and his longtime associate (and future Sargento president) Chuck Strobel found the solution to this problem in the lunchmeat section. Lunchmeat was often hung from metal pegs that allowed the product to be displayed facing out, making customers more likely to notice it. Leonard and Strobel realized the same principle could raise the profile of Sargento cheese

Developing and implementing the peg boards required a huge investment on the part of Sargento. Packaging had to be redesigned to suit them, salesmen had to be trained to install them and stores had to be convinced to carry them — the company achieved that last feat by offering stores the pegs for free as long as they ordered a sufficient variety and amount of Sargento products. It was a lot of time, money and effort to sink into a new concept, but it paid off. Sargento sales rose steadily wherever peg bars were installed — retailers began calling them the “shopper stopper.” Peg boards are now taken for granted as a natural part of the grocery store cheese case.

Sargento Company formally began when Joe Sartori and Leonard Gentine, Sr. signed a partnership agreement to launch a new cheese company. Sartori would help with capital and supplies, while Gentine would run the company day to day. The name “Sargento” derived from the combination of their last names, with an “o” added to the end to give the brand an Italian flair.

Sargento was formed to realize Gentine’s vision of offering American consumers high-quality Italian cheeses in ready-to-purchase portion sizes. Before the company came along, Italian cheeses could be difficult to obtain. They were a specialty product, available only in bulk sizes from which retailers had to carve individual portions manually, and many stores didn’t carry them at all. The company’s consumer-sized packaging would get mozzarella, provolone, Parmesan and Romano to countless grocery store dairy cases, and from there to countless Americans’ refrigerators.

Recognizing the increasing popularity of Mexican food in the United States, Sargento added Taco Cheese to its line of blended shredded cheeses. Taco Cheese featured a blend of mild Cheddar and Monterey Jack cheese along with Mexican-style spices. It marked the first time Sargento or any other company added seasoning to its shredded cheese.

Sargento was always a family-operated business. The company’s first logo was designed by Marge Strobel, Dolores Gentine’s sister and Leonard Sr.’s sister-in-law. Marge’s husband Chuck was integral to the company’s history; a lifelong friend and employee of the Gentines, he was with Sargento from the beginning and would go on to become president of the company.

Tired of having to dip his cheese portions in wax to preserve them and wanting to sell sliced cheese to make consumers’ lives easier, Leonard Gentine, Sr. and his design partner, Bill Lindstedt, utilized a vacuum seal system for cheese in plastic. This allowed cheeses to last longer and made prepackaged sliced natural cheese a grocery store staple.

The development process had been grueling and filled with setbacks, but it was also an early triumph in what would become the template for innovation at Sargento: “At first, the idea could look ludicrous, impossible to achieve. Fatigue and frustration battered them. Disappointments. One failure after another. But those defeats eventually led to new knowledge, new skills, and — if patient enough — success.”

Little conveniences can make a big difference. Sargento Burgercheese offered sliced cheese in the shape of a circle rather than the traditional square to better match the shape of a hamburger or bun. People were so happy not to have to trim the four corners off the slice manually or have cheese dripping down the sides of their burgers that round cheese slices quickly became popular, and making sandwiches got just a little bit easier.

Sargento began operations out of the same converted carriage house that was home to Leonard Gentine, Sr.’s cheese store, the Plymouth Cheese Counter. However, by 1955, just two years after its founding, Sargento was doing well enough to warrant its own dedicated space. The company moved to a rented facility temporarily while exploring its options, then the following year purchased its first permanent production site, a disused plant for the Elkhart Lake Canning Co. The Elkhart Lake site has remained a hub of company operations ever since. It is now one of four Sargento facilities in Wisconsin, and is home to the company’s engineering, research and development and culinary departments

Leonard Gentine, Sr. had long pondered a way to offer customers packaged shredded cheese. He knew the concept would be a winner, so he decided to build one for himself. Using a pasta maker as inspiration, Leonard, Bill Linstedt and Norman “Bud” Dick spent months developing a working prototype that could operate continuously and produce consistent shreds in the desired size. Ready-shredded cheese proved so successful that it was not only a hit for Sargento but caught on strongly throughout the entire industry. The modern dairy case wouldn’t look the same without it.

The newly formed Sargento Food Service Corporation offered domestic or imported cheese “any way you want it” to food service and industrial customers. The company also worked with clients to develop custom-blended or packaged products to meet their specific needs. Sargento Food Service options also included breaded cheese products, such as mozzarella sticks, and dessert items, including chocolate-covered cheesecake.

In 1955, thanks largely to the determination of Leonard Gentine, Sr., Sargento had revolutionized the natural cheese industry when it created a vacuum-sealed package that could keep prepackaged natural cheese fresh longer. In 1986, Leonard’s son Lee spearheaded the implementation of a fitting follow-up achievement: a resealable Zip Pak that would make it easy to reseal the cheese after it was opened. The product was test-marketed in 1986, but quickly proved so popular that Sargento ramped up production to begin a national rollout in 1987.

Sargento realigned its Sargento Cheese Co., Food Service and flexible packaging operations under one parent company: Sargento Inc. Lou Gentine served as president and CEO of the new company. As part of the transition, Sargento Cheese Co. adopted a new logo, which featured a farm scene above the Sargento name, followed by “of Wisconsin” to emphasize the company’s dairy state heritage.

Sargento introduced Moo Town Snackers to give parents an option for their kids and themselves to fit “on-the-go” lifestyles. Unlike many convenient snacks out there, Moo Town Snackers were 100 percent, natural cheese individually wrapped to ensure freshness and convenience.

Sargento moved its headquarters and approximately fifty percent of its operations from Elkhart Lake to the Plymouth Industrial Park in Plymouth, Wisconsin, where the company is still headquartered today. The move represented the company’s tremendous growth and need for additional plant and office space. It also constituted a return to the town where Sargento was born. The rest of the company’s operations, including cutting and packaging bulk cheese, remained in Elkhart Lake.

Butch Gentine spearheaded the development of the first Sargento television commercial. “The Sargento Variety Show” featured animated Sargento products introducing themselves through song and dance in the style of a 1970s variety show. Lyrics referenced specific products and reminded consumers that Sargento cheeses were easy to find because of their peg board displays, “so easy to see because we’re always hanging right before your eyes.”

Leonard Gentine, Sr. moved from the presidency of Sargento to the newly created post of chairman of the board while Chuck Strobel became president and Leonard’s son Lou became a vice president. Chuck, Leonard’s brother-in-law and lifelong friend, had been helping to build up Sargento since its founding. The transition created the framework to ensure that the company’s values continued as Leonard gradually stepped away from day-to-day management. In time, Lou Gentine would follow in his father and uncle’s footsteps as head of the company, and be succeeded in turn by his own son, Louie.

Sargento introduced a new slogan, “Not a big cheese, just a better one.” The slogan reflected the company’s emphasis on quality and giving consumers the best experience possible: “We slice it. Or shred it. Or crumble it. So you don’t have to.”

Sargento took a step outside of its usual offerings with Sour Dough French Bread Pizza, available in Pepperoni, Sausage or Cheese varieties. The experiment would lead the company to decide to continue focusing on cheese as a product, rather than an ingredient, but Sargento never stopped looking for new ways to share its cheeses with the public.

Leonard Gentine, Sr.’s dream of seeing Sargento continue from one generation to the next came to fruition when the board of directors unanimously elected his son Lou president of the company. Lou would lead Sargento for the next 32 years, longer than the company had been in existence when he first took office.

Sargento first called itself persnickety in three short television commercials. In the ads, a master cheesemaker with an exacting eye for detail and no room for compromise continues to push his two young assistants to improve their already high-quality product. A tagline then informs the viewer that Sargento cheesemakers are “The persnickety cheese people from Plymouth, Wisconsin.” The ads became a hit, and the word persnickety became an enduring part of the Sargento brand.

“Persnickety” caught on in part because it was more than just a slogan — it captured the way of life at Sargento. The word was chosen by an advertising specialist who had observed Sargento workers in action and wanted to convey the exacting attention to detail and focus on quality that he saw at every level of the company. Once the ads ran, the company and its employees were so proud of the persnickety label that they made it a part of the company’s core identity. For example, the modern-day street address for the Sargento headquarters in Plymouth is One Persnickety Place.

Believing the market for diet cheese was being underserved by processed options with limited selection, Sargento launched the Dairyland Lite line to offer shoppers natural cheeses. Initial offerings included reduced calorie, reduced sodium and reduced cholesterol options.

When Sargento introduced the first prepackaged shredded natural cheeses in 1958, the ease and convenience of the products began changing the way many people cooked with shredded cheese. In the 1980s, the company spoke to the trends that had unfolded in the twenty-five years since that breakthrough with Sargento Fancy Shred, whose finely-shredded pieces were ideal for certain cooking applications, such as those that called for cheese to be melted or used as flavoring or seasoning.

Sargento Offers The First Pre-Cut Cheese For Convenience