If you sell cheese at retail this summer, you've probably noticed something that doesn't quite match the mood at the farm level: people are buying more of it, and they're not especially price-sensitive about it. Farmgate milk prices are still working their way up from a soft spring - the latest regional dairy outlook we've been reading puts Class III milk prices near their lowest point of the year - but shop owners and counter managers we've talked to this month describe a genuinely strong season for cheese boards, entertaining cuts, and bigger-format wheels going out the door.
Part of it is simply what summer does to a cheese case. Farmers' markets are running full schedules again, backyard gatherings are back to pre-pandemic size, and members tell us customers are treating a cheese board as the centerpiece of a gathering rather than an afterthought next to the chips. A few counter members have mentioned selling noticeably larger pieces of washed-rind and alpine-style wheels than they did a year ago, with customers building a whole meal around one showcase cheese instead of buying several smaller wedges.
Two markets, moving at different speeds
That retail strength sits a little oddly next to the wholesale side of the business, where margins have been thin most of this year. Farm-level milk prices spent the first half of the year working down from 2022's highs, and while commodity block and barrel prices on the exchange have started climbing back off their spring lows, they're still well under where they sat a year ago. For a member who both makes cheese and sells it retail, that gap can actually help this quarter: input costs on the milk side are easing a bit even as the finished product commands a strong price at the counter.
It's worth being careful not to read too much into that gap, though. A good July doesn't undo a hard first half, and members running tight margins on the production side shouldn't assume retail enthusiasm will carry all the way through fall. If you haven't looked at your own cost-per-wheel numbers since spring, this is a reasonable week to do it, before the entertaining season winds down and the numbers get less forgiving.
What we're hearing from members
The consistent theme in the calls we've fielded this month is that customers are asking more questions before they buy: where the milk comes from, whether it's raw, how long a wheel has aged. That's a good problem to have if your case is stocked with something worth talking about, and a reason to make sure whoever is behind your counter this summer can actually answer those questions with confidence, not just point at the label.
If your team could use a refresher on how to talk through provenance and make-style with a curious customer, the Education Committee's course catalog includes sessions built specifically for counter staff, and a few members have told us they run new hires through one before the summer rush rather than after it.
None of this changes our general advice for members watching their margins: track your own numbers rather than assuming the retail mood applies evenly across the business. A strong week of cheese-board sales at one counter doesn't tell you much about what a wholesale account three states away is doing, and members who sell both directions have told us this summer's split has been more pronounced than usual - retail steady to strong, wholesale still cautious.
We'd also gently push back on the instinct to chase the trend by adding a dozen new SKUs before Labor Day. Several members who added cases of unfamiliar imports this spring told us the extra inventory sat longer than expected once the initial curiosity wore off. If the cheese board moment holds, it's likely to reward depth on a handful of well-chosen wheels more than breadth across a crowded case - a smaller selection that your staff can actually speak to with confidence, rather than a wall of options nobody behind the counter has tasted yet.
If you're weighing what to add to your case for August, this is a good week to lean on your fellow members rather than guess alone. The Membership & Outreach Committee keeps an informal list of members willing to talk shop about seasonal buying decisions - reach out if you'd like an introduction.
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.