Dairy Venture Milks Max Yasgur Legend Woodstock Nostalgia Helps Sell Products To Aging Hippies

His fields were the backdrop for the snapshot of a generation. But before the Woodstock music festival made Max Yasgur a counterculture icon, he was just another Sullivan County dairy farmer.

Now, some thirtysomething entrepreneurs who own the rights to Yasgur’s name are quite literally milking it, putting it on ice cream and dairy products that are slowly making their way around the country.

“Nostalgia is a big thing,” Yasgur Farms President Andrew Wohl said. “Everyone wants to be connected to their youth and Woodstock is youth to a lot of people.”

The most visible of Yasgur Farms’ enterprises is a trip into suburban psychedelic - a fuschia ice cream store that opened last year in the food court of a shopping mall in Middletown, 55 miles northwest of New York City.

The selection there includes the company’s flagship flavor “Cow Chip Fudge” as well as such Woodstock-inspired offerings such as “Cosmic Cookie Dough” and “Bethel Butter Pecan.”

While Yasgur farms is trying to build a strong base in its home state, it is also targeting other areas likely to contain grown-up hippies. Sales have been especially strong in fashionable Miami Beach and Boulder, Colo., which has a big student population, general manager Bob Buckner said.

“Everyone we spoke to about Yasgur always had a smile on their face when we explain what we’re doing and show them the product,” Buckner said.

“We’ve probably doubled since 1993 and every month we’re getting more business,” he said.

Yasgur’s specialty ice cream and its rough-around-the-edges flower-child look closely resemble Ben and Jerry’s, the Vermont-based ice cream maker. But the similarities between the products are coincidental, and Buckner says Yasgur was the first to introduce tie-dye to the Yasgur food market.

“We were out there, it’s just that they were bigger than us,” Buckner said. “They might have Wavy Gravy (ice cream) but we have the Yasgur name.”

Actually, there’s no bad feelings between the two firms - Yasgur Farms distributes Ben and Jerry’s in the Sullivan County area, along with Haagen-Dazs and Good Humor ice cream. Distribution is how Yasgur Farms began and is still how it earns its bread and butterfat.

Bruce Krupke, who heads the Syracuse-based New York State Dairy Foods Inc. said that for a small company like Yasgur, competing with big dairy cooperatives is difficult.

“If you don’t have real weight behind you it’s hard to enter areas like supermarkets,” Krupke said. “But if you can find a product that has a niche and make it work for you, you can catch their attention.”

Yasgur Farms’ niche is its name, which gives it an edge over other start-up ventures, Wohl said. Because of the Yasgur legend, the products have immediate name recognition with the nation’s largest population block - baby boomers, some of whom attended the 1969 festival in Bethel.

The name also links the product with music business, a marketing ploy that has worked for many companies, Buckner said. Hence, the Yasgur Farm logo: “It’s Music To Your Palette.’ The association with Max Yasgur began in 1970, when Wohl’s father Lew purchased part of Yasgur’s farm and the rights to his name. Yasgur died in 1974.

After a few unsuccessful years, the Yasgur business became dormant and a disappointed Wohl returned strictly to dairy distribution out of his Rock Hill headquarters. They gave up the property, which was near the original festival site, in the mid-1970s.

The younger Wohl resurrected the name just prior to Woodstock’s much hyped 25th anniversary concert in 1994. The first product bearing the reincarnated name came out in 1993.

“We felt it would be the perfect time to build a foundation here and then build it to other parts of the country,” Buckner said.