Most of what we've put together virtually this year has aimed at owners and managers: pricing decisions, relief-program paperwork, wholesale contracts. Next Tuesday, July 7, we're doing something different. Webinar: Counter Culture 2020 is built for the person actually standing at the case — the cheesemonger, the new hire three weeks in, the counter lead who's been improvising all spring because nobody handed them a playbook for any of this.
We heard the request loud and clear from members in June. Retail traffic patterns have been strange all year, and counter staff have had to relearn basic parts of the job at the same time: how to guide a customer through a case when they can't linger and sample the way they used to, how to talk through a cut over a phone order, how to keep a rotation moving when delivery schedules from distributors like Great Lakes Gourmet Distributors and Heritage Curd Transport & Logistics have gotten less predictable.
Sampling is a good example of how unsettled the basics still are. Most shops paused it outright back in March, and as of late June only a handful of larger retailers had started cautiously bringing it back, in modified form, behind a shield and handed out one piece at a time rather than left out for self-service. Our members' shops are mostly still deciding what, if anything, to do about sampling for the rest of the summer, and that decision touches everything from staffing to signage to how a cheesemonger talks a customer into trying something new without a taste to back it up.
What's on the agenda
The session runs just under ninety minutes and stays practical. We're covering case merchandising when foot traffic is unpredictable and sampling is limited or paused, phone- and order-ahead etiquette for a counter that didn't used to take phone orders at all, and a short segment on recognizing when a wheel's condition has changed enough that it needs a second opinion before it goes back on display. There's a live Q&A block at the end, and we're deliberately leaving more time for it than usual — the chat during our May sessions ran long, and members told us afterward they wanted more of it, not less.
This is free and open to all current members, and it's virtual, so anyone on staff can join from a shop's back room or a laptop at the kitchen table. If you run a counter team, we'd encourage you to treat this as a staff meeting rather than something to skip because it isn't aimed at you directly — the questions your newer staff bring to it are often the ones you stopped noticing you needed answered. Grocery data through late June still showed double-digit growth over last year across the perimeter departments cheese sits in, which is good news for volume but means a lot of that traffic is landing on counter staff who are newer and thinner on the ground than the department is used to handling.
How to join
Registration is open now through the Events Committee. If you can't make the live session, a recording will be available to members afterward, though the live Q&A is the part most people tell us they got the most out of. Bring a specific case problem if you've got one — the format works best when the questions are concrete.
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.