Cheese: Britain Versus the World

When people come to me for help setting up a new deli or cheese shop, one of the first questions I ask is “have you ever worked in retail?” If the answer is no, and to my amazement it generally is, I almost insist they work in a deli before they spend money on me or any other research. Over 25 years maybe a dozen people have subsequently thanked me for saving their marriage, life savings or sanity! Most of the others have gone on to run successful businesses. The other key question new and existing retailers need to ask is “Should I be championing British cheese at the expense of foreign cheese?  Is it financially viable to be selling all British? Will customers go elsewhere if I don’t stock European cheese?”

Fortunately, the answer is a resounding YES. Go local. You should do this for a myriad of reasons. Do it because you want to, and because it is something most people believe is genuinely important.  You may need to cajole them as European cheeses tend to be low in price like for like, but in my experience it doesn’t take much to persuade even the most hardened of Francophiles. The problem is people don’t realise what’s out there and the selection in many shops is still heavily weighted towards hard and blue cows’ milk cheese, with most of the soft cheese simply lumped together. With little or no information available in store, unlike with wines, they don’t know what to ask for. 

With over 750 British cheeses available you should be able to offer customers a new cheese every month if not every day. But when faced with a display of little-known cheeses they will resort to the old favourites. My French customers used to do this at Jeroboams, so when they asked for Cheddar or Stilton – the only British cheese they knew – I would offer them a taste of my Cheddar along with one or two other hard cow’s milk cheeses, and they inevitably bought both! They were also, and still are, deeply impressed by Britain’s range of blues.

When a new customers left with a chunk of Cheddar or Stilton, it would almost certainly be the last time we would see them. So train your staff to recognise the signs and convert an enquiry for Brie or Camembert into a sale of a British soft white cheese – I hope-you have at least four or five. The other comment or criticism unjustly directed towards British cheese is that European cheeses are more flavoursome, more complex and more varied. But this is only because unless you are one of the lucky people who have judged or visited the British Cheese Awards, then you will never have seen the extraordinary diversity of cheese laid out row upon row, rack upon rack for judging – a true visual feast. If you haven’t already been, take yourself and staff off to the British Cheese Awards at the Royal Bath & West Show end of May.

Obviously, you can’t sell all of them but you can, as you would with wine, make sure you have a wide cross-section of cheeses from the main categories and a few carefully-chosen examples of lesser-known styles, like the wrinkly-rinded, aged fresh cheeses seen in the markets in France and the orange, sticky, washed rind cheese. Small and appealing in shape, lesser known aged fresh cheese, like Little Flea or Pablo Cabrito, look amazing on a cheeseboard. Classic washed rind cheeses like Epoisses, Vacherin or even Taleggio are outstanding examples, if not the benchmarks, of their type and if you have room do stock them, but we make over 125 semi-soft and washed rind cheese, more than in the whole of France and Spain combined.  And don’t just offer the classics Stinking Bishop, Gubbeen and Ardrahan.  Try new ones – Keltic Gold, St Oswald, or the goats’ milk Dutch Mistress.

Then you need a handout with such luscious photos that the people who receive it will pin it to their fridges. I recommend at the very least you that outline the seven types of cheese to help them create a great cheeseboard. A list doesn’t conjure the same feast as pictures do. Last but not least, many chefs and retailers still think we don’t make raw milk cheese and are amazed when I tell them there are over 200 made in Britain. So make it your mission for 2016 to spread the word that British cheese is full of flavour, character and style.