Longtime popular cheese factory opens retail store

Cheryl Hentz

Contributor

November 3, 2025

NEENAH – First there was the Union Star Cheese factory in Zittau; then came the Willow Creek Cheese factory in Berlin – both of which are owned by Jon Metzig, the fourth-generation owner/cheesemaker and second-generation master cheesemaker. 

Now, Metzig said the next chapter in the history and iconic life of Union Star Cheese is being written with the opening of The Cheese Table retail cheese shop at 125 W. Wisconsin Ave., in downtown Neenah.

Though the Neenah retail cheese shop is a new venture, Metzig said it was an idea his family kicked around for several years.

“We’ve talked about having a third location for 10-plus years or so, but it was nothing real serious,” he said. “One of the main reasons we considered it, though, was that if we wanted to do more wholesale, we’d have to go the route of having more third-party audits, meaning we’d have to hire a person just to file paperwork.”

And the audit, Metzig said, is not free.

“You have to pay for that person to come out and spend a whole day [at your facility] going through paperwork,” he said. “The overhead for a person just to file paperwork and sell wholesale at small margins is the same cost as opening up a third retail location. So, it made sense to finally do this. Of course, now we’ll have the challenge of managing three locations instead of one or two locations. But the overhead is the same as for larger margins.”

Metzig said another reason they pursued a retail shop was to create a quaint space different from their factory locations.

Drawing on his travels to Europe, he said though convenience and big grocery stores are present, specialty shops are the norm, offering customers exactly what they’re looking for.

“They go to the bakery for baked goods, a butcher to get their meat and cheese shops for cheese, and so forth,” he said. “I liked that concept and wanted to bring that kind of thing back here to the Fox Valley.”

In March, Metzig said he and his wife, Kelsey, decided to open a retail shop – but landed in Neenah purely by accident.

He said when one of their employees had been in Neenah for an event, they saw a “For Lease” sign in the window.

Metzig said he contacted the landlord and subsequently went to look at the property.

After several back-and-forth conversations, as well as discussions with his wife, Future Neenah and others, Metzig said “it just seemed like everything fit together and it was the right thing to do.”

“It was an opportunity we didn’t want to pass up,” he said. 

Metzig said the downtown location is ideal because of the constant foot traffic passing by the store.

“It was exactly the vibe we wanted,” he said. “There are a couple of coffee shops across the street, and there’s a new chocolate shop right by us. People are going past here on their way to and from the farmers’ market in the summer, and that type of thing. There are some major employers within walking distance also.” 

Though both the Union Star and Willow Creek Cheese factories sell their cheeses directly to customers, Metzig said the Neenah location is retail-only and is already making it easier for regulars to get their favorites.

“A lot of people have already been telling us that this location in Neenah is going to save them from making a trip out to the factory in Zittau,” he said. “Others have just noticed the new store and are coming in to check it out.”

Artisan cheeses, as well as all-time favorites

Metzig said The Cheese Table sells all the same cheeses customers can get at either of Union Star’s cheese factories. 

In addition, he said customers can purchase a variety of artisan cheeses from around the world, particularly Europe, and around the country, including Jasper Hill, Vermont; Mineral Point, Wisconsin; and, of course, some which Union Star makes itself. 

In fact, Metzig said it’s Union Star’s artisan cheeses that have contributed to the company’s success.

Though they can’t compete volume-wise with companies like Kraft, Metzig said those larger companies can’t focus on signature or artisan cheeses “because they’re harder products for the bigger factories to make.”

“There’s no point in us trying to compete with bigger companies when producing things like block cheddar, for example,” he said. “So, we try to find and make artisan cheeses that others don’t make. That gives us an advantage over them, right there.”

Metzig said some of Union Star’s artisan cheeses include St. Jeanne, Farmhouse Cheddar, Dry Jack and the award-winning Red Willow – a washed-rind cheese that placed third out of 44 in its category at the United States Championship Cheese Contest a year or two ago.

He said Union Star also makes another signature cheese called Bloom.

Both the Bloom and Red Willow cheeses, Metzig said, are very unique and no one else in the state is making them.

Customers, he said, can sample these cheeses and other lesser-known varieties at The Cheese Table before buying.

“Right now, we’re just focusing on those for people to try before buying, because we don’t have a vacuum sealer at the store,” he said. “All our other stuff that’s pre-packaged is in one-pound packages, and we don’t have the vacuum sealer to be able to re-package it yet.”

Other cheeses for sale at The Cheese Table, Metzig said, include Basil & Tomato Cheddar, Bacon Colby, Mild Cheddar, Marble and Five-Year White. 

He said the store also carries artisan olive oils and vinegars, honey, crackers and other specialty items – including a unique olive oil he and Kelsey discovered at a food show in New York City.

“It all comes from one farm in Uruguay – the Colinas de Garzan Farm,” he said. “It’s their farm’s olive oil.”

Metzig said The Cheese Table also offers cheese-related utensils and entertaining essentials such as spoons, cutting boards, charcuterie boards, bowls and knives, and hopes to add wine to the store’s selection in the future.

In the short term, Metzig said his goal is to continue establishing the business, especially with the holidays quickly approaching, during which time they’ll offer pre-packaged cheese gift boxes, or customers can build their own.  

“Long term, we want to start offering charcuterie trays to-go, wine and cheese classes and other classes associated with cheese, including cheese sampling, cheese and entertaining for the holidays, cooking and that kind of thing,” he said. “We’re trying to create, for lack of a better term, a community around Wisconsin’s history of cheese and artisan cheese in general.”

Micro-cheese manufacturer steeped in history

With The Cheese Table opening, Metzig said he believes his mother and father – Jan and Dave Metzig – as well as the rest of his cheese-making ancestors would be very proud of this latest step in the company’s history. 

Union Star, he said, began in 1904 as a co-op formed by 13 local farmers, including Henry Metzig, the brother of his great-grandfather.

In 1911, Metzig said Henry purchased the factory from the co-op and ran it for many years on his own before selling it to his daughter, Edna, and her husband, Eugene Lehman, who was a cheesemaker when they met. 

As one of the first women to become a licensed cheesemaker and work in a factory setting, Metzig said Edna was a trailblazer back then.

It was Edna and Eugene, he said, who opened a retail storefront at Union Star – which was quite unusual at the time, since cheesemakers back then weren’t known for their customer skills.

But Metzig said they proved people wrong and Union Star developed a reputation for being customer-oriented.

Edna and Eugene, he said, ran Union Star until 1980, when they sold the business to Dave and Jan – who came in with two clear goals: to maintain the creamery’s long-standing focus on producing high-quality cheese, and to keep operations small and local.

Rather than chasing volume or competing with industry giants, Metzig said they instead chose to preserve the hands-on, artisan approach that had defined Union Star from the beginning.

In 2003, Metzig said Dave and Jan opened a second location – Willow Creek Cheese Factory in Berlin.

At the time, he said it was considered something of a preemptive maneuver, made amid concerns about what would happen to the Zittau location once the new, four-lane U.S. 10 diverted traffic away from the small Winnebago County community.

But Metzig said the family’s focus on quality and personal service proved successful at both sites – noting that most customers didn’t mind driving a little farther to reach the Zittau factory.

And, those who did, or those who lived in or nearby to Berlin, he said, had the new cheese factory to go to.

Even today, Metzig said the Zittau factory location accounts for about two-thirds of the company’s total sales. 

Metzig said a few of his brothers also worked at Union Star, with him and his brother, Dave, taking their passion a step further – becoming Wisconsin Master Cheesemakers through certification from the Center for Dairy Research and Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin.

Metzig said he and his father were only the second father-son Master Cheesemakers in Wisconsin.

He said he became the sole owner of Union Star when his parents passed away in March 2023.  

A team effort

As technology advanced, Metzig said Union Star adapted – adding new varieties of cheese and investing in more efficient equipment.

Yet, even with those changes, he said they’ve stayed true to tradition, crafting their premium cheeses by hand.

That commitment to quality, Metzig said, begins with the milk itself – which Union Star sources locally from Silver-Shea Holsteins of Omro, a family-owned dairy farm that supplies milk exclusively to Union Star.

Their milk, he said, is used to produce Union Star’s signature cheese curds, the creamery’s top-selling product.

“After cheese curds, our biggest sellers are still string cheese, Jalapeno Muenster, Colby and a lot of your standard Wisconsin cheeses,” he said.  

Metzig said Union Star produces 300,000-400,000 pounds of cheese annually, from about three to four million pounds of milk.

“That sounds like a lot, but there are factories that process three million pounds of milk in one day,” he said. 

Metzig said Union Star’s workforce consists of 17 employees, roughly half of whom rotate between both locations.

It’s a team, he said, that he takes the greatest pride in.

“One of my proudest things is the team we’ve assembled at Union Star,” he said. “We have a great group of people working together. I wouldn’t be able to do this if it weren’t for the team backing me up and helping me out when and where I need help. They can pick up the ball and run with it when needed. The Union Star team has been incredibly important, and they’re the reason my wife and I can do what we’re doing.”

Learn more at unionstarcheese.com.