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At the ice cream shop on NC State University’s dairy farm, a line winds outside the door nearly every summer weekend.
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That sweet, cold ice cream comes from the cows raised on the school’s nearly 400-acre farm on Lake Wheeler Road. NC State students and staff handle every step of the process: from milking the cows, to pasteurizing the milk in the lab on campus, to scooping ice cream for the masses.
Despite its popularity, public records obtained by The News & Observer show that the school is barely breaking even on its dairy enterprise, and even operated in the red during the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years.
It did, however, turn a profit in this most recent fiscal year, to the tune of $105,000. It made about $4.3 million and spent about $4.2 million. Those numbers cover the whole system: the farm, the processing plant, the creamery, the university’s dairy museum, and its agritourism ventures.
Over five years, the school has generated about $17.885 million in revenue and spent approximately $17.905 million on its dairy endeavors — nearly equivalent figures. In that time, the business grew, but costs grew with it.
Carl Hollifield, director of the Dairy Enterprise System, says that’s how it’s supposed to work.
“People see the line out the door, and all my friends and neighbors think I must have money falling out of my pockets,” Hollifield said. “But we put it right back into education.”
All the money the university makes off selling ice cream and milk from NC State cows — which makes up the vast majority of the enterprise’s $4.3 million revenue — goes back into the operation, Hollifield told The N&O.
He launched the Howling Cow brand in 2008, though the dairy farm has been operational since 1892 and has processed its dairy since 1918. Ice cream came on the scene around the 1940s, and the school began selling it on campus and at the state fair in the 1970s.
The idea behind the Howling Cow brand is to build awareness around agriculture, not to rake in money, Hollifield said. Before the brand existed, NC State students didn’t even realize the milk in their dining hall came from the school’s own cows, he said.
Hollifield’s salary is paid with the ice cream and milk revenue, he said. That’s true for all the students and staff who work on the dairy farm and in the campus milk processing lab. There are approximately 16 full-time employees and 80 students who work on the dairy project.
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The ice cream is sold only at the Lake Wheeler farm ice cream shop, on campus, and at the state fair, according to Hollifield. He also recently launched a food truck that brings Howling Cow ice cream to students at campus events, he said.
Howling Cow had a licensing agreement with Harris Teeter from 2018 to 2023, Hollifield said, but he looks at that as a thing of the past.
“I’m here to support the dairy industry in North Carolina, not compete with it,” Hollifield said. “I would never want to make a bunch of ice cream on campus and then start selling it to grocery stores because that would be competition.”
NC State’s own dining operation is a major customer for the dairy farm.
Here’s how that works, Hollifield said: “I sell a tub of ice cream to [university] dining for 40 bucks, and they in turn sell it to students. That $40 comes to me, and I use it to pay students, to pay for packaging, to pay to milk and feed the cows. … So now you know why my cash balance is always zero.”
The farm’s electric bill alone comes to $5,000 a month, according to Hollifield. It costs a lot to run an operation of this size, he said.
That’s even more true at the university farm, because rather than relying on typical labor, the school pays for students to work and learn. Hollifield could get away with paying one temporary employee to staff the milking parlor, for example, “but that’s not what we’re here for,” he said. Instead, he pays two students to do that work.
Hollifield points out that because expenses are close to even with revenues, the university doesn’t have to use its state money to fund the farm — though Hollifield said the operation does receive some state support. After all, it is state land, he pointed out.
“Our return on investment is being able to have students work,” Hollifield said. “If I can pay for another student hour for another student to get more experience, then I’ve done what I’m supposed to do.”
And “if I had more money,” he said, “I’d probably just buy a new tractor to make the farm life on the students a little easier.”
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This story was originally published September 23, 2026 at 8:00 AM.