Pineland Farms Dairy: Great Partners
When you organize a food festival, people assume you think a lot about toppings or trends or whatever the next crazy poutine idea is.
Truth is, I spend a lot more time thinking about people. The people who quietly make the whole thing better. The ones who don’t need the spotlight but probably deserve it the most.
For us, Pineland Farms Dairy has always been one of those partners.
If you’ve eaten poutine at one of our events, you’ve probably had their curds. But behind that simple detail is a story that I think says a lot about why we work with them in the first place.
Pineland Farms Dairy started in New Gloucester, Maine, with a mission that feels pretty rare these days. The goal wasn’t to build some massive national brand. It was to support local dairy farmers and celebrate Maine’s agricultural roots. They began with a small cheese-making operation and built real relationships with the farms supplying the milk. That part matters more than people realize. When something starts close to the ground like that, it usually stays honest.
As their cheese caught on, they grew. Demand picked up, their reputation spread, and eventually they expanded into a larger facility in Bangor. That kind of growth can change a company. Sometimes it pulls things away from where they started. But what I’ve always respected about Pineland is that they didn’t lose the thread. They still work closely with Maine dairy farms. They still take pride in traditional cheese-making. And they’ve found ways to grow while staying grounded in the same values that started the whole thing.
You can feel that when you work with them. And honestly, you can taste it too.
Poutine is a simple food. Fries, gravy, curds. There’s nowhere to hide. If one piece is off, the whole thing falls apart. So when we think about ingredients, we think about integrity. Not in a fancy way, just in a real, does-this-feel-right kind of way. Pineland curds have always checked that box for us. They’re fresh, they hold up, they melt the way they’re supposed to. But more than that, they come from a system we believe in.
PoutineFest has always lived in this interesting space between celebration and identity. It’s food, sure, but it’s also culture. A lot of what we do sits right at the intersection of New England and French-Canadian roots. Agriculture, family stories, regional pride, it’s all tied together whether we say it out loud or not. Working with a Maine dairy that is deeply invested in Maine farms just makes sense in that context. It keeps things connected.
Some sponsors come in loud. Big branding, big asks, lots of layers. Pineland has never been like that with us. They’ve always felt more like partners than sponsors. They care about the product, they care about the region, and they show up in a way that feels genuine. That goes a long way when you’re building something that still has a lot of independent DNA in it.
The longer we do this, the more we realize that who you build with matters as much as what you build. Events come and go. Crowds change. Cities get added. But the relationships, those are the things that actually shape the story over time.
Pineland Farms Dairy started with a simple idea: support farmers and make good cheese rooted in place. Years later, that same idea is still showing up in their work. And in a small way, it shows up in ours too, every time someone takes a bite of poutine at one of our events.
We’re proud to have them in the mix.