Tillamook Opens Decatur, Illinois, Ice Cream Plant

Tillamook County Creamery Association (TCCA) officially “topped the sundae” (instead of cutting the ribbon) on its new ice cream production facility in Decatur, Ill., on June 4, 2025, with employees, families, local dignitaries and media (including Food Processing senior editor Andy Hanacek) on hand, ignoring the rainy weather for an inside look at the completely renovated former Prairie Farms facility that now displays the TCCA Morning Star (ship) logo (and several large “Tillamook” signs on the outside of the facility).

The plant is TCCA’s first owned-and-operated facility outside of its home state of Oregon — a milestone for the 116-year-old farmer-owned cooperative and its national expansion intentions.

David Booth, president of TCCA, discussed the growth strategy adopted by the brand more than a decade ago that led to this day during the news conference after the event.

“Back in 2012, we made a decision to grow the brand from a well-known Pacific Northwest brand to a West Coast brand,” he explained. “We tested our growth model, proved that out about a year faster than anticipated, and in 2017, we decided to take the brand national.”

tillamook decatur topping the sundae — TCCA executives David Booth (left) and Mike Bever (right), along with local Decatur government officials, look on as Ruben Urrutia, director of operations for TCCA, puts the cherry on top of the Tillamook ice cream sundae to officially open the company's new Decatur, Ill., ice cream plant.

Booth further said the investment in this facility demonstrates TCCA’s commitment to becoming “a beloved, premium dairy brand that people can access everywhere, every day.” The company purchased the plant in November 2022 for $2.5 million, according to reports at the time, and the company originally expected to invest about $50 million to fix it up. When asked for an update during the event, Booth noted the renovation ended up costing between $60 million and $75 million.

Mike Bever, EVP and chief supply chain officer for TCCA, joked with attendees that the renovation was like the home renovation TV show “This Old House,” but renamed “This Old Plant,” because there were surprises at every turn, as one might expect when renovating such a structure. As mentioned in Food Processing’s original coverage of TCCA’s announcement of the project, the facility was built in 1918 by Swift & Co. and sold to Prairie Farms in 1977. Prairie Farms made ice cream out of the facility until 2022 when it was shut down.

Steve Marko, senior director, R&D, for Tillamook County Creamery Assn., leads a media tour around the Decatur, Ill., ice cream plant. Although the plant was not in operation that particular day, this image shows the steel superstructure that TCCA had to construct inside the century-plus-old facility to reinforce the concrete floors and handle the equipment and production loads.

Bever was asked during the news conference about what, exactly, stood out as more challenging among the surprises found during renovation. He said the plant, which had stood for so long and was rumored to be a bomb shelter or fallout shelter during the Cold War, had been really well built for its time. However, some of the concrete had worn and broken down over the decades, and TCCA needed to remedy that.

“We put a steel superstructure under many of the concrete floors,” he said. “So what had been a very strong structure to start with is now probably indestructible.”

At full capacity, the Decatur plant is expected to produce all 32 flavors of Tillamook ice cream at a clip of 15.5 million gallons per year (at presstime, only 19 of those flavors had been commissioned to be manufactured at the plant, they said). Supply will be as local as possible, with the exception of regionally specific ingredients (think Oregon strawberries for that particular ice cream variety as a prime example).

As production ramps up, more jobs are expected to be created, but for the time being, 50 new jobs have been created. The plant also allows TCCA to pull more of its ice cream production internal to the company, giving it more control over the high quality it demands in its products, Bever said. Additionally, it boosts capacity for future growth. Bever noted that Decatur’s overall capacity is more than double that of the company’s ice cream plant in Oregon.

Decatur gives TCCA improved access to its customers and consumers across the eastern half of the U.S., and the company is pushing hard on that strategic growth initiative. According to data cited by TCCA, more than one million new consumers purchased Tillamook family-size ice cream in 2024, and more than half of those new consumers were from the eastern U.S. Decatur, which is in central Illinois, allows better access in all four directions due to its centralized location in this half of the country.