Two numbers crossed our desk this week that don't usually appear in the same paragraph, and members deserve to see them together. Specialty cheese sales are reportedly running double digits ahead of last year across most sales channels, part of a broader post-pandemic surge in home cooking and small-batch food. At the same time, the federal government's latest outlook nudged its cheese and butter import forecast upward for the rest of the year. Growth and competition, arriving in the same week.
The growth is real, and it's not just conference talk
We hear the same story from members in nearly every region: more people asking for something they can't get at a big-box store, more willingness to pay for a wedge with a story behind it, more repeat customers who used to buy the same cheddar every week and now want to try something new each visit. That's consistent with what the trade press is reporting industry-wide this year — call it a specialty cheese moment, not a one-region blip. It's showing up on the competition side too: one widely covered international cheese competition this year drew record entries from more than forty countries, a scale that reflects how crowded and how global the specialty field has become. If your case has felt busier without you doing anything differently, you're not imagining it.
The catch is that "specialty" doesn't mean "protected." A rind that took eight months in your cave sits on the same shelf as an imported wheel that took a very different path to get there, and the shopper deciding between them is comparing price and story, not production method.
What the fuller import pipeline means for your case
The same federal report that's been steady on milk prices all fall also flagged rising cheese and butter imports through the remainder of the year, continuing a pattern from earlier reports. For members who compete directly against imported product — an alpine-style wheel next to an actual Alpine import, a bloomy rind next to its European counterpart — that's worth watching over the next couple of months, not because it changes your production costs, but because it changes what's sitting next to your product on the shelf.
Our read: this is a merchandising conversation more than a pricing one. A fuller import pipeline usually shows up as more choice at a similar price point, not as a price war. Members who've done well this year tend to be the ones who lean into what an import can't offer — the ability to say "this was made forty miles from here" or "I know the person who aged this."
Nothing here calls for a reaction, but it's a good week to walk your case with fresh eyes. If specialty sales are up for you, know which SKUs are actually driving it before you reorder for the holiday season — growth in the category doesn't mean growth in every product. And if you're watching an import competitor more closely, make sure your counter staff has the two-sentence version of your story ready, because that's usually what closes the sale when the price tags are close.
Members working on holiday case planning can find a worksheet in the member portal under Resources, and our Membership & Outreach Committee is always glad to compare notes on what's moving in your region versus what's moving elsewhere.
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.