This Mississippi Campus Store Sells Student-Made Ice Cream And Wax-Coated Cheese Balls, A Tradition Since 1938

A university campus in east-central Mississippi hides a working dairy plant behind an ordinary academic building, and the whole place smells faintly of cold cream and cheddar. Milk from the school’s own herd goes in one door, and wax-coated cheese balls and half gallons of ice cream come out the other.

You can walk right in, hand over a few dollars, and taste what agriculture students have been learning to make since the 1930s. It is one of the most affordable, most genuinely Mississippi food stops you can build a Saturday around.

A Food Science Building With A Storefront Inside

Tucked inside the Herzer Food Science Building on Stone Boulevard, the MAFES Sales Store sits in the middle of Mississippi State University’s campus in Oktibbeha County. The address is 925 Stone Blvd, Mississippi State, MS 39762, and the retail counter occupies just one corner of a building otherwise full of classrooms and laboratories.

Officially it carries the MAFES name, short for the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station. Almost nobody calls it that.

Around the state it is simply the MSU Cheese Store, and that nickname has stuck for decades.

What makes the setup unusual is how short the trip from cow to cash register really is. Milk comes from the university’s own Bearden Dairy Research Center, moves to the Custer Dairy Processing Plant, and ends up on shelves a short walk away.

The store is listed as a dairy store, though that undersells the inventory. Cheese, ice cream, butter, milk, beef cuts, jerky, jellies, and juices all share the same few rooms.

Shoppers describe it as a genuinely unusual shop with more choices than the modest square footage suggests.

Cannon Ball Cheese And A Tradition From 1938

Back in 1938, the university started turning its surplus milk into Edam, a round Dutch-style cheese sealed in wax. The nickname stuck fast: cannon ball cheese, named for the shape rather than anything to do with the school.

Nearly nine decades later, that same red-coated sphere remains the flagship. Families across Mississippi have been mailing them as December gifts for generations, and some households have kept the habit going for more than twenty years running.

Edam shows up constantly in what shoppers talk about, often alongside notes that it tastes true to the classic style rather than like a novelty souvenir. Supply is finite, though.

The store does sell out of it during busy stretches, and a few visitors have arrived to find the shelf cleared.

Every cheese made here ages a minimum of three months before it reaches the counter. That waiting period is not marketing language; it is part of the production standard the plant follows.

Cheddar, jalapeno, and Vallagret round out the lineup. Spreads are popular too, particularly the jalapeno cheddar version that regulars grab when the cannon balls run low.

Sixteen Ice Cream Flavors, One Local Favorite

Ice cream gets mentioned here more than anything else on the shelves, and there is a reason for that. The Custer Dairy Processing Plant turns out sixteen flavors over the course of a year, made with milk from the university herd.

Muscadine Ripple is the one people drive for. Muscadines are the thick-skinned native grapes that grow all over Mississippi, and the ribbon of sweet-tart syrup running through vanilla tastes like a Southern backyard in September.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip has its own following, and butter pecan is a steady seller for folks who want something more traditional. Visitors sometimes eat a serving on site before heading out with a carton for the cooler.

Most of the ice cream moves in half-gallon containers, which is part of what makes it such reasonable value for a family. A couple of shoppers have wished aloud for single-serve cups of certain flavors.

Because production rotates, the freezer case looks different across the seasons. Showing up in July and again in November may give you two completely different sets of choices, which keeps repeat trips interesting.

Student Hands In The Waxing Room

Full-time staff run the core production, but students are woven through the process in ways that go well beyond sweeping floors. They assist with cheese production itself, then handle the boxing, waxing, and distribution that turns a wheel of curd into a giftable red sphere.

Picture the waxing step: a cheese gets dipped, cooled, checked, and labeled, over and over, until the holiday shipping season is covered. It is repetitive work that teaches food handling standards no textbook can deliver.

Out front, student workers staff the sales counter, and shoppers routinely mention how friendly and courteous the people behind the register are. Courtesy shows up again and again in what customers say about the place.

For agriculture and food science majors, the arrangement is practical training with a real customer on the other end. Mistakes have consequences, orders have deadlines, and quality gets judged by people who paid money.

Families with a high schooler eyeing an agriculture degree often find this the most useful ten minutes of a campus tour. It shows what the coursework actually looks like once it leaves the classroom.

The Meat Case, Jellies, And Everything Beyond Dairy

Cheese and ice cream get the attention, yet plenty of shoppers leave with a bag that contains neither. Butcher cuts of meat from the university herds fill a cooler, and homemade peppered beef jerky has become a quiet favorite.

Jellies line the shelves in rows, many of them made with Mississippi fruit. Muscadine juice sits nearby, and a picante salsa has surprised more than one visitor with genuine heat.

Chocolate milk deserves its own mention. Bottled from the same herd’s milk, it is the sort of thing kids will finish before the car leaves the parking lot, and adults quietly order a second one.

Cheese spreads round out the lineup for anyone who wants something to bring to a gathering rather than a whole waxed ball. The jalapeno cheddar spread has a steady following.

Gift boxes are a significant part of the operation. The store ships, lets customers set delivery dates, attaches personal messages, and saves addresses from one year to the next, which makes December ordering far less painful than it sounds.

Game Day Crowds And The Five Minute Stadium Walk

Autumn Saturdays change the rhythm here completely. The store opens on home football game days, and since it sits less than a five-minute walk from the stadium, a steady stream of visitors filters through before kickoff.

Fans in from out of state often make it part of the ritual: a scoop or a carton, maybe a cheese ball for the road, then on to their seats. Some first-timers wander in without knowing what the building is and walk out converted.

Expect company during those windows. Lines can stretch, popular flavors can thin out, and Edam has been known to sell through when traffic spikes.

Arriving early is the practical move. Regular Saturday hours run 11:00 AM to 5:45 PM, later than the weekday schedule, which gives non-game-day weekend visitors a relaxed window.

If crowds are not your thing, a weekday morning is a completely different experience. The same products, the same student staff, and room to actually read the flavor labels without anyone waiting behind you.

Prices, Portions, And What A Family Can Expect To Spend

Value comes up often in how people describe shopping here, with more than one calling it strong bang for the buck. Half-gallon ice cream containers in particular stretch a lot further than a scoop shop cone.

Honesty matters, though. Some longtime customers have noticed prices rising over recent years, and one shopper joked about how hard it is to walk out spending a small amount once the cart gets going.

A modest visit can stay cheap. One container of ice cream, a bottle of chocolate milk, and a small cheese wedge may run well under what a family fast-food lunch costs, and it travels home with you.

Bringing a cooler is the single best piece of advice for a Mississippi summer trip. Heat and humidity here are unforgiving, and a half gallon does not survive a long drive in a hot trunk.

For gift buying, ordering early in the season is wise. Products can sell out, and the shipping calendar fills up as December approaches, so planning ahead often saves disappointment.

Hours, Parking, And Getting There From Around The State

Weekday hours run 9:00 AM to 4:30 PM, Monday through Friday. Saturday shifts later, 11:00 AM to 5:45 PM, and the store is closed on Sunday.

Driving times help with planning. Starkville sits roughly two hours northeast of Jackson, about an hour and a half from Tupelo, and around an hour from Columbus, making it a reasonable half-day outing from much of north and central Mississippi.

Campus parking is the main wrinkle. Visitor spaces near the Herzer Food Science Building fill during class hours and get tight on event days, so mid-morning on a weekday tends to be easiest.

The building itself is a modern academic structure with level entry, and the store area is compact and flat, which generally works for strollers and wheelchairs without much trouble.

Online ordering with in-store pickup is available, and shoppers who have used it report their items ready and waiting on arrival. That option can save a family with restless kids a fair bit of browsing time, though half the fun is looking around.

Bringing Kids Into A Working Dairy Shop

Six-year-olds do not care about food science research. They care that there is ice cream, chocolate milk, and a big red ball of cheese that looks like something from a cartoon.

That gap is exactly what makes the stop work across generations. Grandparents can talk about buying the same cheese decades ago while a kindergartner picks a flavor, and everybody leaves satisfied for a modest amount of money.

Air conditioning is no small thing in a Mississippi July. The store offers a cool, indoor break in the middle of a campus walk, which matters when the heat index climbs past comfortable.

Visit length is short, usually fifteen or twenty minutes, so it pairs well with other stops. Combining it with a stroll around campus, the university’s other attractions, or lunch in Starkville makes for a full but easy day.

One caution for parents: the store is compact and often busy, and the shelves are loaded with breakable jars. Keeping small hands occupied with picking out a flavor tends to work better than turning them loose.

Nearly Ninety Years Of Mississippi Christmas Boxes

Ask around Mississippi and you will find families where the December cheese box is as fixed as the tree itself. Parents send it to grown children, employers send it to staff, and alumni send it to friends who have never set foot on campus.

Continuity is the appeal. A product line that began in 1938 and still uses the same basic idea gives people something to hand down, and plenty of households have kept the order going for twenty years or more.

The shipping system supports that habit well. Delivery dates can be selected, personal messages attached, and saved addresses carried over from previous years so reordering takes minutes.

Not every box lands perfectly. A customer reported receiving spreads that had dried out, and the store publicly asked for the lot number so the issue could be traced, which suggests problems get followed up rather than ignored.

Nostalgia carries real weight here. Buying cheese made by students on the same campus where your grandparents may have studied turns an ordinary food purchase into something closer to a family tradition.

Why This Campus Counter Earns The Drive

Plenty of Mississippi day trips cost more and deliver less. A short stop at a working dairy store gives you food made a few hundred yards away, a bit of state history stretching back to 1938, and a cooler full of things worth eating on the way home.

Judged purely as a shop, it is small and unglamorous. Judged as an experience, it is one of the few places where you can buy something students helped produce in a teaching laboratory that morning.

The ratings back up the reputation, sitting at 4.8 stars, with ice cream, Edam, and the friendliness of the staff coming up most often in what people talk about.

Best plan: a weekday morning if you want calm, a Saturday if you want the fuller schedule, and a cooler either way. Skip Sunday entirely, since the doors stay closed.

For families across the state looking for something cheap, cool, and a little bit different, a half gallon of muscadine ripple and a wax-wrapped cannon ball make a pretty good souvenir.