Bongards Creameries

Bongards Creameries' Bongards' Creameries Division, a small agricultural cooperative headquartered in Norwood Young America, Minnesota, supplies natural American cheese, processed cheese blends, and specialty cheese products to the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a prime contractor across multiple indefinite delivery vehicle contracts with cumulative ceilings exceeding $450 million. The vendor competes full-and-open, holds no set-aside designations, and operates as a dairy commodity supplier exclusively—no subcontracting footprint.

The vendor's federal work centers on USDA domestic food assistance procurement. Bongards delivers cheese in bulk formats (500-pound barrels of natural American cheese, 40-pound cheddar blocks, 6/5-pound sliced packages of processed blends and yellow/white varieties) from manufacturing facilities in Perham and Humboldt, Tennessee, and Norwood Young America, Minnesota. Recent delivery orders exemplify the scope: a $7.2 million ceiling order from Food and Nutrition Service (July 2, 2026) for cheese blend American skim milk solids and processed cheese slices; a $6.98 million order (June 4, 2026) for American skim milk cheese in sliced and loaf formats; and a $3.5 million order (May 5, 2026) for natural American cheese in 500-pound barrels. All contracts use fixed-price-with-economic-price-adjustment structures tied to commodity indices.

Customer concentration is extreme. The Food and Nutrition Service accounts for 649 of 811 awards (80% of all awards) and $3.06 billion of the $3.22 billion combined potential value across the portfolio. The Agricultural Marketing Service Washington Office places a distant second with 22 awards ($137.2 million). The vendor operates almost exclusively in the NAICS 311511 cheese manufacturing category.

Bongards holds ten active indefinite delivery vehicles with the USDA Food and Nutrition Service and Agricultural Marketing Service. The largest are a $104.14 million processed cheese IDV (February 9, 2026, through June 30, 2027) and a $89.46 million cheese blend IDV (October 19, 2023, through December 31, 2024). Historical vehicles include a $129 million IDV (completed December 31, 2023) and a $106.4 million IDV (completed December 31, 2022). Task orders flow continuously; the vendor received 16 awards in 2026 year-to-date, 37 in 2025, and 47 each in 2023 and 2024, though 2022 saw only 44.

Bongards also received a $185,622 cooperative agreement from the Agricultural Marketing Service under the Pandemic Market Volatility Assistance Program (CFDA 10.183, December 6, 2021) to disburse pandemic relief funds to eligible Minnesota dairy farmers through June 30, 2022. The vendor acts as a pass-through recipient rather than a service performer in that award.

Six awards face ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months, representing $21.9 million in potential recompete exposure. The vendor's award trajectory remains consistent, with quarterly order flow maintaining a steady pipeline of $3–8 million per delivery order. As a cooperative dairy manufacturer without federal IT, logistics, or specialized service work, Bongards' competitive moat rests on production capacity, food safety certification, on-time delivery track record, and geographic facility placement for USDA nutrition commodity distribution—not on teaming, innovation, or set-aside eligibility.

Bongards is a Minnesota farmer owned cooperative. With the milk produced on our family farms we produces block and barrel cheese as well as process slice and loaf. A variety of blended and analog cheeses are also produced at our Southern facility.