Red Truck Orchards

[STORY]Red Truck Orchards’ co-founder spent 40 years working in pharmaceuticals before returning to their family’s Hallstedt Homestead Cherries orchard in Northport, Michigan.

They’d spent childhood summers watching local cherry growers haul crates of Montmorency cherries to market each July, and saw how fragile small northern Michigan cherry farms were: a single bad weather event or dropped bulk processing price could put a family operation out of business.

A 2021 How I Built This episode featuring Seventh Generation co-founder Jeffrey Hollander stuck with them. Hollander built his company around putting purpose ahead of profit, rather than chasing a big corporate exit. That model felt right for the orchard.

They started small, testing cherry vinegar recipes in their home orchard kitchen using only Montmorency cherries sourced from local family farms within 20 miles, including their own Hallstedt Homestead trees. The first batches were bright, tangy, smooth enough for both salad dressings and summer spritzers. They loaded crates into a beat-up red pickup truck and drove them to the downtown Traverse City farmers market.

That red truck became the company’s logo, a promise to skip big corporate distributors and hidden supply chains, working only with cherry growers they knew personally.

Production moved to an on-site facility at the orchard’s address: 8233 N. Matheson Rd, Northport, Michigan. Every bottle of Red Truck cherry vinegar is still made there, from local Montmorency