If your phone has been ringing with retail buyers asking about your December availability a full two months early, you're not the only one. Specialty cheese has been the strongest-performing corner of the dairy case for a while now, and industry sales trackers put the category well ahead of the broader cheese aisle on both dollars and pounds sold this year. Retail buyers who watch that gap closely tend to start their fourth-quarter ordering conversations in October, not November, and this year is no exception.
The reason isn't complicated. A cheese board is one of the few grocery purchases that reliably pulls other items into the basket with it — crackers, preserves, cured meats, a bottle of something — which makes the category disproportionately valuable to a retailer's overall holiday numbers, not just its own line item. That gives specialty buyers real incentive to lock in supply early and to favor producers who can commit to a delivery window rather than a "we'll see what's ready" answer. Trade coverage out of this fall's European dairy shows echoes the same pattern on the wholesale side: buyers moving earlier, and favoring suppliers who can name a date.
What that means for your own calendar
If you sell wholesale or through a retail account, this is the stretch where a clear answer about November and December availability is worth more to a buyer than a slightly better price with an uncertain date attached. Members who've been through a few holiday seasons tell us the accounts that stick with them long-term are usually the ones they gave a straight, early answer to — even when that answer was "we're sold out of the aged wheels, but here's what we can still deliver."
It's also worth thinking about your case mix, not just your volume. Seasonal flavor trends this year lean toward warm spices, dried fruit, and anything that reads as gift-worthy on a board — a wheel that photographs well next to a fig spread tends to move faster in a holiday display than the same cheese sitting alone on a shelf. If you make something with a natural rind that holds up to gift packaging, now is the time to ask your retail contacts whether they're building holiday sets, and whether there's still room on the list.
Wholesale cheese pricing has also been drifting in a way worth watching alongside this demand story — the latest federal price forecast revisions nudged expectations for both cheese and Class III prices this quarter. That's not a reason to reprice a standing order on your own, but it's a reasonable thing to raise with a buyer who's asking for a longer commitment than usual right now.
A word about capacity, not marketing
None of this is a reason to stretch a make schedule past what your cave can actually hold. A rind that gets rushed to hit a November ship date usually shows it, and a buyer who gets a disappointing wheel in December remembers that longer than they remember the one good year before it. If a request from a retail account would mean packing your cave tighter than usual for the sake of the calendar, it's worth saying so plainly rather than guessing you'll find the humidity headroom later.
For members weighing how much of this fourth-quarter demand to chase versus how much to hold back for regular accounts, our Direct-to-Consumer & Farmers' Markets course and our Counter Culture: Retailing course both spend time on exactly this kind of seasonal allocation question — how to say yes to a good account without shorting the ones who were there in March. Either is a reasonable use of an evening before the holiday orders really start landing.
We'll keep an eye on how the season plays out and flag anything that looks like it's shifting the picture for small and mid-sized producers specifically.
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.