Public health guidance going into this week was blunt: keep Thanksgiving small, and skip travel if you can. Members selling into retail have told us all fall that a smaller gathering doesn't mean a smaller order. If anything, the opposite has shown up in their numbers — households buying for four or six people instead of fourteen are still filling out a full cheese board, and in several cases spending more per person than they did on last year's bigger gathering.
Retail cheese sales overall have stayed unusually strong through the pandemic as more people cook and entertain at home rather than out, and specialty cheese in particular has held up better than most grocery categories expected going into this year. A shopper who isn't hosting a large family dinner or traveling to one still wants the holiday to feel like something, and a cheese board is one of the easier, lower-effort ways to do that at a kitchen table instead of a dining room.
What members are seeing at the counter
A few retail members told us this week that their pre-Thanksgiving orders skewed toward smaller-format cuts — quarter wheels and wedges rather than the large format a bigger gathering would have called for — but with more variety per order than usual. Instead of one crowd-pleasing cheddar for a big table, shoppers are buying three or four different styles for a table of four or six, treating the board itself as the centerpiece rather than a side item next to a turkey. One shop owner described it as "grazing instead of carving," and said she's restocked her case twice this week already.
That shift has a practical upside for smaller producers and specialty retailers, since a board built around variety rewards a wider assortment rather than volume of any single cheese. A washed-rind wheel or a firmer aged style that might have gotten passed over on a big-holiday shopping list in favor of something more familiar is doing better this year as shoppers build a board rather than a single dish.
What to watch into December
If this pattern holds through Christmas and New Year's, it's worth building your December ordering around variety and smaller formats rather than assuming this year's holiday case should look like last year's. A few members are already telling their distributors to hold back on the largest wheel formats they'd normally stock heaviest for December and lean toward the assortment that's been moving well since Thanksgiving.
None of this offsets what a hard year it's been for the foodservice side of the business, and we're not suggesting retail strength papers over that. But if you sell direct or through a specialty retail account, this week's numbers are a useful signal for how to build your case through the rest of the holiday season — and a reminder that a smaller gathering isn't the same thing as a smaller order. If you want to compare notes with another member on how their holiday case is performing, the Membership & Outreach Committee can make the introduction.
The International Cheese Federation (ICF) and More Cheese are entirely fictional. This post is demonstration content created for MemberJunction. All people, organizations, events, courses, certifications, figures, and quotations in it are invented, and nothing here represents a real association, a real business, a real person, or real professional advice.