Most of the buyers we talk to describe cheese buying as a job you can't really do without your hands and your nose in the room. One member, a specialty buyer for a small grocery chain in the Southeast, has spent the last thirteen months proving that's only mostly true. She hasn't sat across a cutting board from a producer since early last year, and she's still built her spring case around cheeses she's never touched before they showed up on a truck.
Her process starts with a video call, a decent webcam propped on a stack of books, and a producer walking a wheel through good light. "I ask them to cut it in front of me instead of sending a pre-cut sample," she told us. "A pre-cut piece can hide a paste that's uneven or a rind that's cracking somewhere you can't see." She watches how the knife moves through the paste, asks about the last three affinage checks, and gets a sample shipped only after that call convinces her it's worth the freight.
It isn't a perfect substitute, and she's the first to say so. Aroma doesn't travel over a video call, and neither does the way a rind gives slightly under a thumb. She's had two orders in the past year that looked right on screen and disappointed her case when the sample finally arrived — one with a bloomy rind that had gone slightly ammoniated in transit, one where the paste was chalkier than the video let on. Both got sent back, and both producers got specific feedback about what didn't match. "I'd rather tell someone their cheese wasn't ready than put it in my case and have a customer make that call for me," she said.
What's stuck even as things reopen
With some regional events starting to plan in-person sessions again for later this year, we asked whether she'll go back to buying the old way once travel is easier. Her answer was more complicated than a yes. She'll keep the video-call screening step regardless, because it's let her evaluate far more producers than she used to have time to visit in person, especially smaller creameries she'd never have found a travel budget for otherwise. What she's looking forward to is pairing that screening with an in-person visit before a first order goes in for a brand-new supplier — a step she's had to skip more than once this year and doesn't love skipping.
What she'd tell a producer sending a first sample
Her advice to anyone pitching a specialty buyer sight-unseen: don't dress up the video call. Cut the piece she asks for, in the light you actually have, and answer the affinage questions honestly even when the answer is "we're still figuring that part out." A buyer who's screened forty video calls this year can tell the difference between a producer being straight with her and one performing confidence, and the honest ones are the accounts she keeps calling back.
If your own creamery is trying to land a first order with a buyer you've never met in person, the federation's Storytelling & Provenance in Marketing course covers how to present a cheese's story clearly under exactly these conditions — useful whether the person on the other end of the call is evaluating you for a shelf or a wholesale account.
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.