A fourth-generation West Marin ranch that has grown into a wholesale and direct-to-consumer meat brand in the Bay Area and beyond is consolidating its headquarters and shipping operations in Petaluma. It’s described as a critical step in taking the business to the next stage — a move made as a number of smaller California ranching businesses face mounting economic and structural pressures.
Stemple Creek Ranch has leased 13,244 square feet of the former Miyoko’s plant-based cheese facility at 2086 Lakeville Highway, positioning itself with centralized facilities. It brings together functions that had been split between a small office and warehouse in Novato for the past 15 years and a larger warehouse in Richmond for the past decade. It also places the business closer to its home ranch in Tomales.
“We’re swimming upstream against the trend of folks either leaving California or leaving the Bay Area or consolidating into bigger companies,” said Conner Hackett, general manager. “It feels like we’re setting ourselves up to buck that trend a little bit — and reverse it.”
At an inflection point
Company leaders framed the Petaluma move as a foundational investment for a ranch business that began as a family operation and gradually evolved into a multichannel meat company supplying restaurants, grocery stores and consumers in the Bay Area and nationwide.
“Petaluma was our prime geographical target, because it’s right on the 101 freeway, it’s really easy for transit, and it’s also just about 15 minutes from our home ranch,” said Lisa Poncia, an attorney and co-owner.
The Petaluma facility is intended to function as a receiving and shipping centralized hub, with frozen and refrigerated storage for both wholesale and retail products, dry storage for shipping and promotional materials, and fulfillment of e-commerce orders.
Multichannel business
“It’s a very diverse business,” Hackett said. “We’ve got a lot of different sales channels. We sell (business to business): grocery, restaurant. We do our own distribution. We have a small fleet of delivery vehicles, and we also have our direct-to-consumer business, and we sell at farmers’ markets around the Bay Area, and we have this growing e-commerce business that we’re shipping direct-to-consumer all over the country.”
Relocation of storage and shipping operations began Jan. 9, and the facility was expected to be fully operational by Monday. It’s a phased transition, with customer-facing elements planned for later in the year.
Paige Green
Lisa and Loren Poncia, flanked by their daughters Julianna (at left) and Avery at the Stemple Creek Ranch in June 2025. (Paige Green)
Paige Green
A herd of cows grazes at Stemple Creek Ranch, an organic, regenerative operation in Tomales, California, in May 2020 (Paige Green)
Paige Green
Grazing, ear-tagged cow at Stemple Creek Ranch in Tomales, California in May 2020. (Paige Green)
Katherine Emery
The Stemple Creek Ranch barn hosts the inaugural Futurewell summit on Friday, Sept. 6, 2019. (Katherine Emery)
Courtesy of Lisa Poncia
Loren Poncia surveys his cattle at Stemple Creek Ranch in Tomales, California (Courtesy: Lisa Poncia)
Paige Green
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Lisa and Loren Poncia, flanked by their daughters Julianna (at left) and Avery at the Stemple Creek Ranch in June 2025. (Paige Green)
In a second phase, Stemple Creek plans to add customer pickup and retail-oriented experiences — a first for the company. That could include sale of products that fit with the meats.
“And that is not really anything that we’ve been able to do before at our previous locations,” Poncia said.
She said the company expects to work on that phase in February and March, with a target start date of April 1.
The space also includes a small kitchen. That’s where Miyoko’s founder Miyoko Schinner had tested recipes and demonstrated them on camera. She was removed as CEO in 2022, and the plant closed two years ago this month.
Stemple Creek plans to use the kitchen for chef demonstrations, research and development, and potentially pop-up dinners.
“We have some plans at this new facility to be more, to have retail functions there too, actually somewhat of a storefront,” Hackett said.
Agritourism as a growth engine
Those plans extend a business strategy that has relied heavily on direct engagement rather than traditional advertising. Agritourism — including ranch tours, on-site dinners and cabin stays for buyers and chefs — has been central to how Stemple Creek built its reputation and customer base.
“If people would come to the ranch, see the pastures, see the animals, meet us, shake our hands, look us in the eyes and hear from us directly, then they would really understand our product, understand what we were doing and that would create loyalty and excitement about our products,” Poncia said.
From farmers’ market to wholesale
Stemple Creek Ranch began its branded meat business two decades ago, and it started to shape in 2009.
“We started selling quarter beef, half beef, whole beef, and half lamb and whole lambs off of our website. The business grew slowly and steadily from there every year,” Poncia said.
A turning point came when the company was invited to sell at the Sunday farmers’ market run by the Agricultural Institute of Marin at the county Civic Center.
“When we were selling at the farmers market, we started meeting restaurant chefs that came there, and they requested our product to be served in their restaurants,” Poncia said.
That’s how the wholesale business started, leading to encounters with grocery buyers.
But meeting wholesale demand plus consumer interest required operational upgrades, including USDA-certified processing so meat could be sold as individual retail cuts.
Those relationships were reinforced through continued face-to-face engagement and agritourism.
“If people would come to the ranch and see it and see the pastures and see the animals and meet us and shake our hands and look us in the eyes,” Poncia said, “that they would really understand our product and understand what we were doing, and that it would create loyalty and excitement about our products.”
Today, Stemple Creek products are sold at farmers markets, through direct-to-consumer shipping and via wholesale accounts that include grocery stores, butcher shops and restaurants across the Bay Area. Those include all four Oliver’s Markets in Sonoma County and being featured at Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley for more than a decade, according to The Press Democrat.
Focus on organic and regenerative ag
Poncia’s husband, Loren, is the great-grandson of Angelo Poncia, who immigrated from Italy in 1897 and started a dairy that operated for three generations. In 1989 the family switched to running cattle. In 2005, they shifted their 400-acre operation to organic, regenerative practices focused on soil health, water resources, and biodiversity, producing grass-fed, grass-finished beef and lamb and pastured pork.
That approach earned national recognition last month, when Stemple Creek Ranch won the Leopold Conservation Award, a national honor recognizing farmers and ranchers who go “above and beyond in their management of soil health, water resources and wildlife habitat on working land,” according to the Sand County Foundation. Lisa Poncia described the award as “the Super Bowl of regenerative agriculture,” The Press Democrat reported.
Challenges for local meat producers
Despite its growth, Stemple Creek faces challenges common to small- and mid-sized coastal meat producers.
“Access to USDA processing is a big challenge being a smaller business,” Hackett said. “We’ve had to consolidate all of our processing over into the (Central) Valley.”
Two major North Coast meat processing facilities have closed in the past several years. Marin Sun Farms stopped offering custom processing at its Petaluma plant in 2019, and Redwood Meat Co. shuttered its Eureka facility in 2024 after 70 years in business.
The region continues to have butcher shops such as the two Stemple Ranch refers buyers of its whole or partial animals — Bud’s Custom Meats in Penngrove and Willowside Meats in Santa Rosa. But for wholesale and DTC orders, Stemple Ranch has grown to the point of needing a larger processor.
Local commitment in a consolidating industry
Hackett, who ran a ranch financial consultancy in Humboldt County starting in 2017, joined Stemple Creek in October 2024. He said the Petaluma facility is key to scaling responsibly.
“I saw an incredible brand with an incredible following,” he said. “The new space is really a foundational piece to take it to the next stage of being really a regional brand and bringing on more ranch partners, more suppliers.”
Today, the operation has expanded via leases to manage about a couple thousand animals grazing on around 8,000 acres in Marin and Sonoma counties.
Staffing at the Petaluma site will draw from the company’s roughly 20 employees across ranch and fulfillment operations. For Lisa Poncia, the move reflects both practical and symbolic alignment with the company’s roots.
“We’re very excited to be able to do this in our hometown,” she said. “It feels really right for our business and our brand and our staff.”
The Petaluma lease was signed Dec. 30, 2025. Laura Duffy of JLL represented Stemple Creek Ranch. Trevor Buck, Brian Foster, and Steven Leonard of Cushman & Wakefield represented the property owner, Basin Street Properties.
Jeff Quackenbush joined North Bay Business Journal in May 1999. He covers primarily wine, construction and real estate. Reach him at jeff@nbbj.news or 707-521-4256.