Hallstedt Homestead Cherries is taking its Red Truck Orchards cherry vinegar brand to the next level, with the launch of a brand-new high-speed bottling line and expanded retail placements across Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. The Northport farm announced the new phase last week at an open house, which included members of the trades team that built the new production facility and representatives from the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD), which helped fund it.

Red Truck Orchards soft-launched during the summer of 2024, following a six-year development process for its cherry vinegar. The product grew its presence at local farmers markets during the first half of 2025, added online sales in July, and reached full commercialization last October. Now, with the new bottling line, Hallstedt Homestead Cherries co-owner Phil Hallstedt says Red Truck Orchards can “easily hit 5,000 to 8,000 bottles a month,” up from just 700 bottles last July.

“[That output] should easily be able to supply 400 or 500 stores,” Hallstedt tells The Ticker. “But we are sized in such a way that we could expand, in our current footprint, up to 30,000 bottles a month, and that’s looking at 2,000-plus stores. We built this production facility so that we could scale. It’s similar in many ways to what Great Lakes Potato Chips did. I so admire those guys, because they started small and they built and built and built. We're trying to follow that same kind of framework.”

To push things forward, Red Truck Orchards has teamed up with Carmela Foods, a Detroit-based distributor that delivers to stores throughout Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and parts of northern Kentucky. Hallstedt says Carmela is “out beating the pavement as we speak” to put Red Truck Orchards vinegar in front of grocers across that region and get it on more store shelves.

While Red Truck has landed a few retail partnerships on its own – including with local Meijer stores, Cherry Republic, and the Cherry Capital Airport gift shop – Hallstedt says most shipments at the moment are still onesie twosie orders through the official Red Truck website. The partnership with Carmela, he hopes, will be a gamechanger.

“We continue to ship bottles across the U.S. via orders from our website, and right now, we’re shipping over 1,000 bottles a month,” Hallstedt explains. “But the reality is that it's pricey for customers to do that. People would be able to get the vinegar a whole lot cheaper if we got some more retailers on board. Now that we’re working with Carmela, we’re trying to tell people that if they want cherry vinegar and they’re in the Midwest, they just need to ask their grocer, because grocers now have ways to get it stocked.”

None of this growth would have been possible without the new high-speed bottling line, which was funded by a $100,000 Underserved/Value Added & Regional Food Systems Grant from MDARD.

“Up to literally within the last month, we were still bottling by hand,” Hallstedt says. “That was labor intensive, but it also meant some inconsistencies. The fills were not as precise on each bottle, and the label was not applied 100 percent consistent. Those little things matter, because we want to showcase that this is a high quality product.”

As for speed, with the new line, a team of 2-3 people can bottle 3,000 bottles of vinegar in half a work day. Previously, it would have taken the same group 2-3 days to bottle that much vinegar.

Hallstedt is hopeful the extra volume, plus the Carmela distribution footprint, will take Red Truck Orchards to new heights – and in the process, serve as a model for how farms can turn their value-added products into core revenue drivers. Given enough demand, the Hallstedts would even pursue a larger operation that would bring other local cherry growers into the Red Truck Orchards fold.

While he’s optimistic about the new chapter, Hallstedt is candid about which emotion is most dominant these days.

“I’m nervous,” he laughs. “We have a long ways to go [to break even]. In terms of the investment we've made so far, it's in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was a matter of leveraging the farm – as well as our own savings – to make this happen. So, we are all in. We are going to need some additional capital if we are to achieve what our big goals are, of strengthening and supporting other small cherry farms. We’re going to need more money for a larger production facility. But first, we've got to prove that we can tap out the facility we're in, and that there's enough demand for a better vinegar. That’s what this new phase is all about.”