On Ed Henderson’s north Florida dairy, pressure cookers once hissed on the stove while a small sterilizer sat beside jugs of milk and coffee concentrate.
It was an unlikely place to develop a beverage brand. But Henderson and fellow dairy farmer Dave Temple were working to turn a milk-based iced coffee into a shelf-stable drink, an idea that would eventually become Thunder CoffeeMilk.
Henderson never pictured himself as an entrepreneur. Instead, he had spent much of his career managing Shenandoah Dairy, which he and his family started in 1987 with 100 cows. Today, Shenandoah Dairy has about 3,000 milking cows and nearly 3,000 acres of cropland.
Henderson will share his experience developing Thunder CoffeeMilk at the 2026 MILK Business Conference. He will join Kevin Wulf of Riverview, LLP, for a panel discussion titled “Rethinking the Dairy: Ideas Worth Watching.”
A Vacation Conversation
The idea for Thunder CoffeeMilk began during a vacation in the Florida Keys.
“Dave and I were vacationing together, sitting on a rooftop and talking about ways to create a value-added product from milk,” Henderson recalls.
They considered several ideas, including a milk liqueur made with citrus. But the concept they kept coming back to was a milk-based iced coffee.
“Dave told me they drink coffee brewed with milk in Australia, and we didn’t have anything like that here in the United States,” Henderson says. “We started talking about how we could bring that idea here.”
Their original plan was to use milk from their own dairies, bottle the drink and sell it locally. But turning the concept into a product they could produce consistently and sell proved more difficult than expected.
The drink needed to withstand processing to become shelf-stable, and Henderson says no facility in the Southeast could process the coffee-and-milk blend. Production took place in Chicago, making it impractical to ship their own milk there.
“There’s just no place near Florida that’ll do that,” Henderson says. “And it didn’t make any sense to send our milk all the way to Chicago. It’s way cheaper just to buy milk.”
The company instead sources milk from Michigan, closer to its manufacturing facility, to keep transportation costs down.
Making the Drink Shelf-Stable
Developing a formula that could withstand commercial processing was one of the biggest challenges Henderson and Temple faced. Retort processing uses heat and pressure to sterilize sealed cans, allowing the product to remain shelf-stable without refrigeration. But the heat and acidity of the coffee caused the milk proteins to coagulate, ruining the drink’s texture.
“When we first ran our product through the retort, when it came out, it came out like pudding,” Henderson says. “All of the proteins in the milk coagulated because we heated it up with an acid in there.”
Neither farmer had a background in food chemistry, so they turned to food-processing experts for help. They rented time at Michigan State University’s Food Processing and Innovation Center, where they used a pilot-scale retort to test and refine the formula.
“Dave and I are not food chemists. We’re dairy farmers,” Henderson says. “We tell people the thing we got going for us is perseverance.”
The pair tested dozens of formulas, adjusting the recipe and running it through the retort to see how it held up.
“We ran through—I don’t remember if I said 50 different formulas, it could have been 75,” Henderson says. “Just multiple formulas, kept running it through, trying to figure out something that would work.”
Eventually, they developed a drink made with about 90% milk and quality coffee that could withstand the process without relying on many chemicals or preservatives.
“This product goes through a process called retort, and retort is like a pressure cooker,” Henderson says. “It’s not any different really than canning tomatoes or vegetables. We put the product inside of a can, it goes through the pressure cooker, and that’s how we make it shelf stable.”
The packaging evolved alongside the formula. Thunder CoffeeMilk went from a glass jar to a screw-top aluminum can before the pair settled on a taller can produced by a contract manufacturer.
Finding the right manufacturing partner presented another hurdle. Henderson says no facility in the Southeast could process the coffee-and-milk blend, so production moved to Chicago. Rather than ship milk from Florida, the company sources milk from Michigan, including lactose-free milk, to keep transportation costs down.
The team also discovered how the drink responds to cold temperatures. A batch shipped to Wisconsin froze during winter storage, causing the milk to separate and creating another consideration for distribution in colder markets.
After years of testing and adjustments, Thunder CoffeeMilk became a shelf-stable canned drink available in retail markets from Texas to Minnesota and through online sales across the country. What began as an idea for a local bottled beverage had grown into a business with a national reach.
Selling a Product is Different From Producing Milk
Developing Thunder CoffeeMilk brought Henderson into a side of the dairy business he had not spent his career doing: marketing a product directly to consumers.
When he sees the dairy case at a grocery store, Henderson says he gets frustrated by how milk is presented alongside competing beverages, including plant-based alternatives.
“As dairy farmers, when you go into the grocery store and you see all of the competition, all the non-dairy product, encroaching on our dairy case - it’s uncomfortable,” he says. “I don’t like our product in just a gallon jug presented with a three-by-three label.”
Thunder CoffeeMilk gave Henderson and Temple a chance to approach the market differently. But producing a beverage and convincing consumers to buy it require different skills.
“Dave and I are dairy farmers,” Henderson says. “We are production oriented, not sales oriented. Sales-oriented people, they think differently. We had to rely on other people to help us with things we didn’t know, whether it was food science, manufacturing or figuring out how to sell the product. We know how to produce milk, but taking a product like this to market is a whole different business.”
They learned that lesson through retail placement. An early Walmart listing put the cans low on the shelf near other coffee products, limiting visibility and making point-of-sale advertising less effective. The experience showed Henderson and Temple they had more to learn about how shoppers see and buy a product.
Henderson says they have since found a better approach to retail placement and are working to repeat that success elsewhere. Thunder CoffeeMilk is now sold through retailers in Texas, South Florida and Minnesota, as well as online.
Persistence Beyond the Farm
Building the business has tested Henderson and Temple in ways that differ from running a dairy, but Henderson says the willingness to keep working through setbacks has carried over.
“As farmers, we have grit,” Henderson says. “We’re accustomed to hard work. Just because somebody says no doesn’t mean we stop. It means we find a different way.”
Henderson encourages other farmers with ideas for new products or businesses to explore them, even when the path forward is uncertain.
“If you want to make a difference, then you have to give it a try,” he says. “There’s no way to get to the other side without crossing the street.”
Developing the Next Version
What began as a conversation between two dairy farmers has grown into a beverage business, giving Henderson and Temple another way to bring milk to consumers. Today, the pair have three shelf-stable, milk-based coffee drinks on the market, with a fourth in development.
The company is developing a higher-protein version of Thunder CoffeeMilk that would contain 26 grams of protein. The new drink would give consumers another option in a market where protein content is drawing attention.
“Dave and I’ve been back in the lab working this thing through,” Henderson says. “We’re really close and protein is what everybody’s driving the market right now.”
For Henderson, Thunder CoffeeMilk has opened a new chapter in his work with dairy. As he prepares for changes at Shenandoah Dairy, the beverage business gives him another way to stay involved in the industry, this time by developing and marketing a finished product rather than focusing on milk production alone.
To read more stories about farms diversifying their operations, check out:
