Our Story | Udder Buddies

Udder Buddies started with two lifelong friends, a family dairy farm, and a friendly challenge to make the best ice cream in their friend group. Kevin Korbel and Jamieson Lindquist grew up just five minutes apart in Lonsdale, Minnesota, rode the same school bus, and graduated from New Prague High School together. Kevin grew up on his family’s dairy farm, where his family has been farming for three generations, while Jamieson grew up around his family’s vineyard and later worked in the vineyard industry. Their shared connection to agriculture would eventually bring them together in a very different way.

Kevin and Jamieson working together in the dairy plant

Kevin making one of the first batches of homemade ice cream

It all started when Kevin began bringing milk from the family farm over to Jamieson’s house to make homemade ice cream in Jamieson’s ice cream maker. The first few batches were terrible, but they kept experimenting, learning and trying to outdo each other. As Kevin was going through a stretch where he had been laid off from three different jobs in three years, the ice cream hobby started to look like an opportunity. The two friends began wondering if they could take the milk from Kevin’s family farm and turn their homemade ice cream into something bigger.

In December 2022, that idea became Udder Buddies. Working with the University of Minnesota pilot plant, Kevin and Jamieson developed their ice cream with a simple goal: make one flavor really well. They chose Homemade Old Fashioned Vanilla, using milk from Kevin’s family dairy farm, and made their public debut in August 2023 with just over 600 pints. Those first pints sold out in about a month, turning a friendly competition between two friends into a growing Minnesota ice cream business.

Kevin and Jamieson holding Udder Buddies pints

Kevin and Jamieson with one of their early ice cream containers

Today, Udder Buddies has 10 wholesale locations, a mobile ice cream trailer and cart, and its own kitchen space in Lonsdale, Minnesota, close to where the story began. But Udder Buddies is about more than ice cream. It’s a way for Kevin and Jamieson to share their connection to agriculture and give people a taste of where their food comes from. From our cows, to our milk, to our ice cream, to you. That’s Udder Buddies.