When Tonja Engen talks to people about what she does for a living, most people ask her the same question: 

“Are you just in the kitchen all day making food?”  

It’s an understandable question – with her primary office being the Culinary Center at Land O’Lakes’ headquarters in Arden Hills, Minnesota, Tonja does spend a decent amount of time in the test kitchen.  

To say that’s all she does, however, would be a major underrepresentation of her work.  

In her day-to-day as a senior brand studio specialist, recipe development is just a part of her story. She juggles everything from researching food trends and hosting customer visits for sales and marketing teams to organizing video shoots, managing content curation on landolakes.com and providing general support for several business units. 

It’s a lot, but that’s what makes Tonja’s job so exciting for her. 

“It’s never the same,” Tonja says. “I love the variety in my work and also knowing that it touches so many parts of our organization.” 

And though it can seem like the long list of duties she performs are independent of one another, they are all geared toward one objective. 

“My goal is to build brand awareness and create trust with our consumers because that helps sell more Land O Lakes® products,” Tonja says, “and that helps our member-owners.” 

A day in the life 

Tonja says there isn’t a typical day for her and her team. The Culinary Center is organized into two groups, Foodservice and Retail, and they work on everything from recipe development to innovation and product-focused sales support. 

Most of what Tonja does, however, revolves around recipe development, food content strategy and social trends.  

The Culinary Center works on a trimester schedule each year, and the team spends anywhere from three to six months developing recipes for those trimesters. For example, Tonja has been working on recipes for the upcoming summer trimester that starts in May since the beginning of the year.  

“It's more than just going into the kitchen and whipping up something that sounds good,” Tonja says. “There's a very deliberate process.”  

When they start developing content, her team works with our business and marketing teams to determine which products are a priority – for the last few trimesters, the team has had a point of emphasis on our Dairy Case Cheese category. They also take into account what time of year the recipes will be going out and if there are any holidays or other cultural touchpoints to consider.  

Once product priorities are decided, Tonja does a deep dive into current culinary and social media trends. That research covers everything from flavor profiles and cooking methods that are currently popular to overall consumer behaviors and how people want to prepare their food. 

Right now, Tonja says there is a big push toward convenience in cooking while still achieving restaurant-quality meals. While those two trends may not seem like they go well together, Tonja says there are creative ways to make recipes that capture both. 

“We used to promote recipes that were made 100% from scratch. Now, the consumer doesn't necessarily want to do everything from scratch,” Tonja says. “They're okay buying premade bread dough, for example, or frozen pizza dough and using them to make recipes and still feel successful.” 

By the end of the ideation process, the team has 15 or 20 strong recipe ideas that they want to pursue. A team of consultants then takes that list and begins further developing and testing those recipes. 

Once the recipes are finalized, Tonja and her team coordinate photo and video shoots that will be the foundation of the content shared on the Land O Lakes Kitchen Instagram page and other social media platforms.  

Once a campaign is finished, each recipe and its associated photos and video are archived. Recipes are also uploaded to landolakes.com, which allows for reuse in the future.  

Tonja says though it may seem like a lot of work to get 15 to 20 recipes created, the process is essential to make sure only the highest quality ideas reach the top.  

“One of our biggest strengths is that we’re a 100-plus-year-old cooperative. Our customers recognize and trust our brand,” Tonja says. “We never want to take that for granted. We have to make sure our recipes work.” 

Nothing’s butter than this 

Tonja’s journey to Land O’Lakes was anything but conventional.  

With a master’s degree in international management, she spent the early part of her career in business. Tonja didn’t discover her passion for cooking until she became a stay-at-home mom. One of her favorite things was date nights with her husband, but without access to babysitters, they didn’t have much opportunity to go out. 

“I had to learn how to cook. I had no cooking experience outside of cooking with my mom growing up,” Tonja says, “but I found out it was the one creative bone in my body.” 

After becoming more than proficient and making a name for herself in the Twin Cities, she was approached to write a cookbook, and she became a well-known figure locally with appearances on the daily news magazine show “Twin Cities Live.”  

Looking for a new challenge, she took a job as an on-call employee at Land O'Lakes and was eventually offered a full-time position. At the co-op, Tonja says she’s able to do what she loves while also serving our cooperative and our member-owners in a meaningful way. 

“I feel so lucky. This job hits every part of what I love to do,” she says. “I wake up and think about food every day. I love the challenge of coming up with the perfect recipe for our products.” 

Tonja has thrived at Land O’Lakes. And though her job always has her doing something different, every aspect of her work is aimed at inspiring customers to be creative in the kitchen the way she gets to be every day. 

There are a lot of ways Tonja could probably measure success in her role, but for her, it all comes down to doing work that supports our member-owners.  

“If a new recipe can inspire a customer to buy just one more box of butter or one more block of cheddar cheese, that means more member milk is being used,” Tonja says. “What an impact that can make.” 

And with Tonja and her team in the Culinary Center, there seems to be no end to the ideas that spark that inspiration. 

“The Culinary Center is full of creative, talented people with different specialties and areas of expertise, but everything we do comes back to a passion for food,” Tonja says. “There's nothing better than that.”