Bluff View Bank: A bank with a 142-year view
Stepping out from private-label ‘shadows’ to serve community
July 13, 2026
MANITOWOC – Since 1887, Director of Brand Marketing Matt Voltoline said Lakeside Foods has been making a name for itself, primarily as a private-label manufacturer.
“We co-manufacture for the brands of loved retailers, from Meijer to H-E-B to Walmart to Whole Foods,” he said. “It’s like this thing hiding in plain sight… Our role is a little bit in the shadows. We’re there to make Whole Foods’ and Walmart’s products, [for example], shine and meet the expectations their shoppers have, so we’re kind of like the biggest food company you’ve never heard of.”
Voltoline said the company – which specializes in (yet hardly limited to) canned and frozen vegetables – operates largely behind the scenes, which is perfectly fine with him and other Lakeside leadership.
“We’re not prideful,” he said. “We don’t necessarily need all that recognition. It’s complimentary enough to us to have the longevity we’ve had and the continued business.”
With that longevity, however, Voltoline said Lakeside’s commitment to its community has also grown, as the company has become increasingly involved with supporting local initiatives and voluntarism.
Lakeside’s culture of generosity, he said, extends throughout its workforce of nearly 1,200 year-round employees and another 1,000-1,200 seasonal workers, many of whom have longstanding ties to the company and one another.
“The majority of our talent works in ops, and I’d say in ops, it’s very common to see folks work their way up through the ranks, and that helps kind of keep the culture in place,” he said.
From there, Voltoline said the “family-feeling” culture within Lakeside can only flow outward.
Not only does the company fulfill its “corporate responsibility” through its community initiatives, but he said “honestly, it’s just good business.”
“If you want to be a company that is around for 140 years, you have to take care of the land and, in our case, the growers and the relationships,” he said. “The communities we operate in, [for Lakeside] to be successful, those communities need to thrive.”
Voltoline said one event earlier this year – the Ice Age Trail 50 – was a perfect, if somewhat unconventional, fit for Lakeside, giving the company a chance to step out of the shadows.
“How do people learn about us if not through a label, like a lot of food and beverage companies?” he said. “It’s not easy… How do we activate those relationships in a way that will matter to people who live in our hometown?”
Ice Age Trail 50
According to iceagetrail50.com, the Ice Age Trail 50 is one of the country’s oldest continuously running ultramarathons.
This year’s event marked 44 consecutive years of the 50-mile run (with a 50-kilometer run and half-marathon also available), taking place on Wisconsin’s Ice Age Trail, starting in Kettle Moraine State Forest-Southern Unit in La Grange.
Voltoline said Lakeside’s involvement in the event was due to “a convergence of things.”
First, he said Lakeside CEO Joe Yanda is “an avid endurance athlete” with an affinity for “earth sports” such as trail running and gravel bike riding.
“They’re not in an arena – they’re a bit raw,” he said. “Sometimes these courses go literally right through the fields in which we’re growing crops.”
Voltoline said he and many other leaders at Lakeside share similar passions for outdoor activities, as well as an appreciation for whole foods when it comes to both fueling up and recovering.
“We’re not a sports nutrition company…, but I know from experience that when people are doing long courses out on the trails, you don’t just want sugary stuff all the time,” he said. “Believe it or not, some boiled potatoes with some salt are amazingly functional and good on the gut. Or sometimes you crave a little bit of protein, like a meat stick.”
Per Lakeside’s website, the company provided boiled potatoes and meat sticks at aid stations throughout the course and also supplied vegetable blends at the finish line for the post-race meal.
Voltoline said the experience was “kind of new for us, but we had a great time.”
“[Our involvement] lets people think and feel something about Lakeside Foods, more than just seeing a sign on the side of the road…,” he said. “Seeing our food as part of everyday vitality like that – it feels right.”
Workplace Partner of the Year
That same philosophy, Voltoline said, extends to how Lakeside gives back locally.
In 2025, per lakesidefoods.com, Lakeside team members supported United Way Manitowoc County through donations, a silent auction of company parking spaces and a penny war that brought out friendly competition.
Such was the impact that Lakeside was recently named United Way Manitowoc County’s 2025 Workplace Partner of the Year – a recognition which Voltoline said admittedly, for an otherwise humble company, “feels good.”
“Sometimes it can be tricky for a big company…,” he said. “We don’t want to self-promote. It’s better when the partner voices it.”
Voltoline said Lakeside was recognized at United Way Manitowoc County’s annual Appreciation Luncheon – an event that, according to Lakeside’s website, “celebrates the workplace partners, volunteers and community supporters who helped drive the organization’s impact over the past year.”
Per the recognition, Lakeside’s 2025 campaign helped achieve the following results:
- 9,714 books distributed to local children
- 509 volunteers were engaged
- 705 people helped during times of crisis
- $6,750 distributed toward anti-hunger projects
Voltoline said it was an honor for Lakeside to help contribute to those numbers, regardless of whether the company was named the organization’s 2025 Workplace Partner of the Year.
“We’ve been supporting them for 38 years,” he said. “It’s a call to action from leadership, and I think everyone participates in some way or another, through matching and fundraising efforts our colleagues undertake.”
Employees throughout Lakeside, Voltoline said, “are very happy to see us give back.”
“It definitely makes them feel proud to be part of the company,” he said.
Though participation is entirely voluntary, Voltoline said leadership participation and a culture of giving encourage broad employee involvement.
Lakeside being named United Way Manitowoc County’s 2025 Workplace of the Year, he said, can only help to encourage more generosity throughout the team.
“It’s always great when you see the outcome of your efforts being recognized and knowing that it matters,” he said.
Lakeside longevity
Voltoline said Lakeside has grown into a company that works with family growers around the Great Lakes region and now in the Pacific Northwest, and “makes products that are probably in your pantry.”
He said he credits Lakeside’s long success and sustained growth to the generational “stewardship of leaders who have a real stake in the success of the company,” fiscal discipline and its core product focus: vegetables.
“We make some wholesome products I don’t think will ever ‘go out of style,’” he said.
Voltoline said the congeniality of giving back is similarly evergreen.
“Shipping a lot of product to customers – that feels good and is a form of success,” he said, “but you want to have people feel good about wearing a [Lakeside] logo on their shirt when they go out to dinner and around the community.”
Lakeside’s positive communal reputation, Voltoline said, has a number of beneficial “byproducts,” including helping the company recruit new talent.
“Investing in the community – it’s kind of an ‘all ships rise as the tide lifts’ [concept],” he said.
As Lakeside nears its 140th anniversary, Voltoline said it will continue to seek expansion across product lines, markets and, potentially, its footprint, having acquired the Oregon-based Smith Frozen Foods in November 2024.
Whatever the future holds for the company, Voltoline said it will always maintain a sense of communal charity in its plans, and do so with the right mentality.
“[Sponsorship] is more than just a logo placement,” he said. “It’s really integrating ourselves with the experience. I know we’re a little bit more focused on Wisconsin here, but we can take that into the other geographies in which we operate and live and work and play.”
