Our Heritage

In the early 1900's the Petaluma Cooperative Creamery began distributing Clover Brand dairy products to stores and residential customers in the Petaluma, CA area. As Petaluma and the rest of Sonoma and Marin Counties continued to grow, so did the Co-op. Clover Brand products began showing up in nearly every store and household in the North Bay.

In 1969, Clo the Cow first appeared as the official mascot for Clover Brand products and has graced billboards in Northern-California ever since with her magnificent smile and witty puns.

In 1975, disaster hit. The biggest fire the town of Petaluma had ever seen struck the Co-op, destroying the processing and bottling operations, and the cooler.

Clover Stornetta Farms, Inc. was born from the ashes of that devastating fire. Following a decision by the Co-op not to rebuild the facility, the current owners of Clover Stornetta purchased the wholesale distribution business from Cal Co-op and Stornetta's Dairy in Sonoma, CA in August of 1977.

In 1984, the company moved and consolidated all of its distribution back to Petaluma. In June, 1991, Clover Stornetta opened its new state-of-the-art milk processing facility at the Petaluma location. The Stornetta Dairy in Sonoma served as Clover's only bottling plant until then. The equipment was antiquated and much of the work was done by hand. With this new fully automated plant with computerized controls, Clover is able to do three times the volume of the old plant with virtually the same manpower.

Over the years, more renovations to the processing facility not only focused on quality, but on doing things “greener.” Clover believes that being a sustainable business is the only way to do business, and we’ve done just that for three generations. We look forward to the next generations to pick up where we leave off.