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There's no doubt that dairy consumer behaviors have changed in the COVID era. Who does it help and who does it hurt? Who can capitalize and who's in trouble? Ted, T3 and Anna debate.

Also, T3 observes an even more worrying trend among Millennial and Generation Z consumers on the horizon—and it's got nothing to do with the pandemic.

Anna: Welcome to "The Milk Check," a podcast from T.C. Jacoby & Company, where we share market insights and analysis with dairy farmers in mind.

Ted: You know, we're heading down the road from fall into winter, and temperatures are dropping and worried reports of the virus picking up speed in various parts of the country. Do we expect to have another debacle of dumped milk because of it? Obviously, my answer would be no.

T3: Mine would too.

Ted: And I think that there may be a silver lining, you know, not because of the virus but because of the fact that we now have some experience with it. I think it's correct to say that retail cheese sales are up. And I think they're up by, I saw, I've seen a number of different reports but anywhere from 1% to 3%.

T3: Oh, I think it's more than that. I think most assumptions right now, they may be up 1% to 3% in the current week. But I think, you know, since let's say April 1st, most of the numbers I see are within, let's say 3 or 4 percentage points of 10%.

Ted: Retail.

T3: Retail. And there's an offset obviously on the foodservice side.

Ted: Yeah. Well, the question that I wanted to raise, even though I don't recall 10% but the question that I wanted to raise is, will we lose that going forward? And I'm beginning to come down on the side that we won't, I don't think it'll sustain necessarily that level of increase but I doubt if it's going to go back to where it was before the pandemic. People started using cheese and eating cheese and became more accustomed to cheese. And I've several times used the example of my cheese counter at one of the stores I shop at that specializes in organic and really good specialty cheeses, and sometimes their cheese counter, which is relatively small but really well-stocked, is so crowded. I can hardly get at it. I have to elbow my way in and they stock a lot of artisan cheese and foreign cheeses and so on. Especially cheeses with cranberries and chives and all sorts of stuff.

I think the increase in sales of cheese are locked in. Now, is that going to translate to increases in cheddar block or barrels? Well, that's another question, isn't it? And I don't know whether it will or won't. I tend to think that we may see this vertical integration sort of come to a halt and we see more diversification in cheese manufacturing towards different styles of cheese. In the last—Teddy correct me if I'm wrong—10, 20, 30 years. We've seen vertical integration where people have gone huge plants to mot the cheddar blocks to cheddar barrels, in some cases to parmesan, and they basically chew up milk at a commodity sale cheese.

I think we're heading more towards specialty kinds of pieces. I think of Emmy as a good example. They produce a lot of different styles and they market them. I get this one website called The Deli Markets or something like that, that I happened to be on the email list for and all those different styles of cheeses, Carr Valley, Cowgirl Creamery, and all those different styles of cheese are on display at these cheese counters now. And people are picking up these little pieces and trying them. I think it tended to go in that direction.