For most of the last couple of years, a specialty cheese buyer we work with at Mongers' Row has thought about her case the same way she'd think about a lifeboat: cut whatever wasn't essential, keep the lines that sold reliably, and don't take a chance on anything new until the numbers said she could afford to. This spring, for the first time in a while, she told us she's doing the opposite.
"I added four new lines in March that I would not have touched last year," she said. "Not because I'm suddenly flush, but because the math finally makes sense again."
What actually changed
Feed and energy costs that squeezed small producers through 2025 have eased, and it's showing up on the supply side in a way she notices before her customers do. Wholesale prices from a couple of the farmstead creameries she buys from have come down slightly, or at least stopped climbing every quarter, which gives her room to add a wedge here and there without blowing up her cost of goods. Consumer interest hasn't cooled either — she says customers are still asking for cheeses tied to a specific place or maker, the kind of provenance story that's been driving specialty demand for a couple of years now, and that appetite didn't go away during the leaner stretch.
That doesn't mean she's buying carelessly. She's still watching margin per wedge more closely than she did five years ago, and she's still the kind of buyer who tastes a new supplier's wheel before she'll put it in the case, not just the spec sheet. What's different is that she's willing to take a chance on an unfamiliar producer again, instead of sticking exclusively to the three or four she trusts blind.
The part that's slower to come back
Not everything has snapped back. She's still cautious about holiday-season commitments, having gotten burned in 2025 when a supplier she'd contracted with for the winter case had to scale back production mid-season. And she's noticed her own customers are pricier per pound than they used to be, even as the wholesale side eases — retail hasn't caught up to the relief yet, which is its own kind of pressure on a case that's trying to grow. Specialty varieties in particular have kept climbing even through the leanest stretch, which is part of why she never pulled them from the case entirely, even when she was cutting everything else.
She's also thinking further out than she used to. A year of tight margins taught her to ask suppliers harder questions before she commits shelf space — not just "can you make this," but "what happens to your price if your feed costs go back up." A couple of the producers she buys from went through real distress in 2025, and she doesn't want to build a case around a supplier who might not be there in twelve months. That's a newer habit for her; a few years ago she mostly bought on taste and let the business side sort itself out.
She's also started splitting her buying between a small core of producers she trusts completely and a rotating slot for something newer, which is roughly how she landed on those four additions in March. It keeps the case interesting for regulars without betting the whole section on an unproven maker.
If you're a producer wondering whether buyers like her are ready to hear a pitch again, her answer was straightforward: bring a sample, not just a listing sheet, and be honest about your production capacity if she asks. "I got burned trusting a volume number that wasn't real," she said. "I don't need you to promise me the moon. I need you to tell me what you can actually make."
Members thinking about building or rebuilding a wholesale relationship this season might find our Pricing & Margin for Specialty Cheese course useful before that first conversation — it walks through exactly the kind of margin math she's doing every time she decides what goes in the case.
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.