After 18 years in operation, the owners of Trickling Springs Creamery decided on Monday evening to shut down production in the wake of a fraud investigation. Friday is the last day of operation for the Pennsylvania farm, according to Joe Miller, director of sales and marketing for Trickling Springs.
That means its 1,500 stores across the East Coast—including two popular shops in D.C.—are facing an uncertain future. The farm sells its products at Trickling Springs shops at Eastern Market and Union Market.
“I’m an employee just like the rest, and it’s hit us with shock,” says Miller, who’s been with the company for 10 years.
Miller declined to share the reasons for the closure of the farm. An outstanding enforcement order from the Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities might offer a clue, though. The complaint, dated Nov. 30, 2018, alleges that Trickling Springs solicited investors without disclosing relevant details of the company’s financial difficulties.
Trickling Springs executives are accused of making transactions in “willful violation” of state law.
The complaint alleges that Trickling Springs executives solicited more than $7.8 million from 110 investors and $963,104 from 15 Pennsylvania residents between 2015 and 2017, while failing to disclose that the company was insolvent the entire time.
The document also says the company’s executives withdrew more than $1.3 million from the company’s bank accounts between 2015 and 2018, and failed to disclose those transactions to investors as well.
Miller declined to comment on the allegations.
A former employee of Trickling Springs who chose to remain anonymous told Washingtonian that they quit after paychecks frequently arrived late.
Trickling Springs Creamery opened in Chambersburg, Penn., in 2001, producing milk and other dairy products from grass-fed cows and without synthetic hormones. Gerald Byers and Myron Miller founded the farm with a requirement that cows have year-round access to pasture and that dairy products are processed with low-temperature pasteurization.
Local devotees of Trickling Springs dairy need not panic right away—according to Miller, the stores will sell through the farm’s remaining inventory and could remain open even longer as markets selling other companies’ products.
“We’ve been very pleased with how the retail stores in D.C. have been doing and the support the community has been showing for those stores,” Miller says. Sales figures at the D.C. stores did not factor into the company’s decision to close, he says.
Miller says D.C. shoppers frequently sent emails and social media messages with heartwarming stories of their relationship with Trickling Springs products—“stories of feeding their kids our milk and how much they loved it, stories of immigrants who came in and said this tasted like milk they grew up with … It was always a bright spot.”
