Two pieces of research crossed our desk this week that, at first glance, do not look related. One is industry data on the specialty cheese category showing steady overall sales growth even as many makers report narrowing rather than expanding their own lineups. The other is a federal drought update showing 58 percent of the Midwest in moderate to extreme drought as of late last week, up sharply from a month earlier, with pasture and hay conditions worsening fastest across the region's northern and central counties. Read together, they tell a fairly coherent story about where a lot of our members are focusing their attention right now.
Making fewer things, better
Several members have told us this year that they are narrowing their own lineups compared to the steady expansion the category saw through the late 2010s, and category-wide sales data backs up that this is not just a local pattern. That is not necessarily a warning sign. A creamery that makes six cheeses well and sells all of them tends to be in a healthier position than one making twelve where four are barely breaking even on the labor to produce them. Sales for the category's stronger performers have grown faster than the market overall, which suggests buyers are rewarding depth and consistency in a smaller lineup over breadth.
If you have been debating whether to retire a slow-moving variety to give your best sellers more cave space and more of your own attention, this is a reasonable season to make that call. It is easier to cut a cheese in summer, when demand for lighter styles is naturally higher anyway, than to do it in November when a holiday customer is asking why their favorite disappeared.
The hay side of the ledger
For members with their own herds rather than a purchased-milk supply chain, this summer's story is less about lineup discipline and more about feed costs. Drought conditions across the Midwest deteriorated quickly between May and late June, and hay buyers are reporting firm to strong prices with limited supply in several states. A farmstead member who milks a small herd told us plainly: "We are not panicking, but we are buying hay a month at a time instead of stocking up for the season, because the price keeps moving and we do not want to guess wrong twice." That is a sensible posture if you are not sure which way a market is headed — smaller, more frequent purchases trade a little convenience for a lot less risk.
The two trends meet in the same place: members who buy their own milk, or who milk their own herd on tighter margins, are the ones most exposed to a feed-cost summer, and they are also the ones most likely to benefit from a leaner, more disciplined lineup. Fewer wheels made from more expensive milk is a math problem worth running now, not after the invoices from July's hay arrive.
Keep an eye on your own cost-per-wheel through the next couple of months rather than assuming spring's numbers still hold. If hay costs are squeezing your margin harder than usual, our Pricing & Margin for Specialty Cheese course covers how to rebuild a make-and-sell plan around a shifted input cost rather than just absorbing it and hoping fall brings relief. And if you are weighing which varieties to keep or retire, that is exactly the kind of conversation the Membership & Outreach Committee is happy to have with you — they talk to enough of the category to know which trims tend to work and which ones cost a creamery its most loyal customers.
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.