SIC 5451 Dairy Product Stores

SIC 5451

This category includes establishments primarily engaged in over-the-counter retail sales of packaged dairy products to customers. Ice cream and frozen custard stands are classified in SIC 5812: Eating Places, and establishments selling ice cream and similar products from trucks or wagons are classified in SIC 5963: Direct Selling Establishments. Establishments primarily engaged in processing and distributing milk and cream are classified in the various dairy products manufacturing industries.

NAICS CODE(S)

445299

All Other Specialty Food Stores

Cheese, milk, butter, and other dairy products stores, as well as packaged ice cream stores, are the predominant types of retail establishments found in this group. Like other retail grocery segments at the turn of the twenty-first century, dairy stores faced eroding market share from competition with supermarkets, convenience stores, and superstores. In the early 2000s, for example, convenience stores and drug stores showed impressive sales of milk even though milk consumption continued a decline that began in the 1970s. Total retail fluid milk sales were down 1.3 percent in 2005, but fluid milk at convenience stores gained 6.7 percent in sales that year.

Most stores in this classification are small, private companies with less than 10 employees. Nearly 50 percent had four or fewer employees. Larger firms in 2006 include family-owned W.H. Braum Inc., based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, which operates 280 Braum's Ice Cream and Dairy Stores in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Missouri, and Arkansas. North Aurora, Illinois-based Oberweis Dairy operated 35 retail stores and 31 franchises as of 2006, at which time it delivered milk and other products to 40,000 homes and sold more than $50 million worth of ice cream and milk annually. Stew Leonard's, based in Norwalk, Connecticut, began as a small dairy store in 1969 with seven employees before gaining recognition as the World's...