Since moving to Salem in late 2020, Don Froylan’s workforce has quadrupled.
The Mexican cheesemaker has 63 employees, said Lisa Ochoa, who owns the dairy on Northeast Portland Road with her husband Francisco. They recently increased production by adding evening and weekend hours to meet growing demand for their cheese.
“This growth is definitely in our favor,” Ochoa said.
The growth was thanks in part to help from the U.S. Small Business Administration. Don Froylan received a loan that helped them move into an expanded Salem facility.
The Ochoas hosted Isabel Casillas Guzman, the agency’s administrator, along with U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas on a tour of the dairy plant Tuesday to highlight the many small businesses in Salem that have received loans, grants or other assistance from the federal agency.
“We are very proud,” Ochoa said of hosting the delegation. “We are very excited.”
Guzman and Salinas also visited MAK Metals, a sheet metal manufacturer in Dallas; Chemeketa Community College’s Agricultural Complex; and Sackcloth & Ashes, a seller of handmade blankets made from recycled materials based in south Salem.
This blanket retailer was founded in 2014 with a social mission to donate a blanket to a local homeless shelter for every blanket sold.
Founder Bob Dalton was inspired by his own mother’s experience with homelessness and now encourages customers to connect with local homeless shelters through a scannable QR code on every box delivered.
“If we want to see change happen, it has to happen at the local level, and it has to identify solutions that actually work in local communities,” Dalton explains.
The company sold 100,000 blankets last year and benefited from an SBA loan that helped them pay for the product and expand to a larger location on Southeast Vista Road. They moved two and a half years ago from a smaller shop on Northeast Broadway Street.
“I am honored that the SBA is a part of this story,” Guzman told Dalton during the tour.
Guzman and Salinas said they want to highlight the agency’s success stories and help make entrepreneurs aware of the resources available to them.
From March 2021 to March 2022, Oregonians opened 17,483 small businesses and closed 14,795, according to the government’s latest economic profile. Small businesses added more than 55,000 jobs statewide during that time.
Salinas said one of the things he learned was the need for government assistance to bridge the gap between scientific research that can help businesses, especially in agriculture, and its actual implementation.
“It was a really rewarding experience for me,” Salinas said. “I didn’t realize that there was such a gap between research and actual commercialization, and how we connect those. And I think there’s still work to be done there, so I wanted to help and be part of that solution.”
Guzman said that since the pandemic, the agency has focused on expanding the information available to business owners in multiple languages.
Francisco Ochoa told him during a tour of the dairy that he had seen an increase in business resources available in Spanish since he took over his family’s dairy.
Their workforce is largely Latino, and many are immigrants — some with experience as cheesemakers in their home countries. Lisa Ochoa said she appreciates Salinas’ support for immigrant workers and families during his tenure.
Don Froylan is currently planning a 6,000 square foot expansion on the south side of the building to add production capacity and large-scale cooling.
Ochoa said he was pleased Don Froylan had played a role in the growth of Salem’s Northgate neighborhood, which he said was often considered an uninvested part of town.
He said the expansion of the 45th Parallel building, with Xicha Brewing moving its brewing operations into the facility, is another example of urban development in the neighborhood.
Don Froylan recently took home the American Cheese Society award for best string cheese for the second year in a row — another point of pride for the company.
“The best string cheese in the world is Mexican string cheese made in Salem, Oregon,” he said.
Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.
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Rachel Alexander is the editor-in-chief of the Salem Reporter. She joined the Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers city news, education, nonprofits and more. She has been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade. Outside of work, she is a skateboarder and a board member of Cherry City Roller Derby in Salem and can often be found engrossed in a book.
