Cheese & chocolate for all
Central Point — Welcoming a chocolate factory to the neighborhood will help Rogue Creamery promote its property as a tourist destination for gourmets, company spokesmen and city officials say.
Lillie Belle Farms plans to open a retail store in a remodeled building on the creamery’s North Front Street lot by November, said owner and chocolatier Jeff Shepherd. The company will then move over its production in January from a 1,500-square-foot warehouse on Table Rock Road.
“We’re really expanding,” Shepherd said.
The creamery had been courting Shepherd for more than a year to put down roots next door with several other artisan food producers, but Lillie Belle required the entire 4,000-square-foot site, said Francis Plowman, director of the creamery’s marketing and merchandising.
“We have wanted for some time to make this more of a destination point,” Plowman said. “We feel they’re a very similar business to us.”
