For a stretch of the last two years, specialty cheese was the section of the case that got trimmed first. With restaurants closed or operating at reduced capacity, the wholesale channel that used to move a lot of premium wheels dried up, and some retail buyers told us they weren't confident customers would pay a premium price when a familiar block was sitting right next to it. That caution is starting to lift. Members running counters have been telling us specialty varieties are moving again, with harder alpine-style and aged cheeses among the categories picking up the fastest.
That recovery is putting new weight on a credential we haven't talked about as much this year: Certified Cheesemonger. It's built for exactly this moment — someone standing at a counter who can tell a customer what makes a bloomy rind different from a washed rind, why a wheel priced higher isn't just marked up for the sake of it, and what to reach for if a regular liked last month's selection but wants something new.
What the credential actually covers
Certified Cheesemonger isn't a tasting class dressed up with a certificate. It covers handling and storage practical enough to matter on a real sales floor — how a cut wheel behaves differently from a whole one, what temperature swings do to a paste over a few days, and how to talk a customer through a substitution without guessing. It also covers enough of the production side that a counter staffer can explain why two wheels from the same style category taste nothing alike, which turns out to be one of the more common questions members say they field.
For a retail operation rebuilding its specialty case after two lean years, the case for putting a lead counter person through this credential isn't abstract. A trained cheesemonger sells the wheel that's harder to move on its own, because they can explain it. That's real margin recovery, not just a nice-to-have.
Getting a shift schedule around it
The most common obstacle members raise isn't cost, it's scheduling — a retail floor with three or four counter staff can't easily send someone away for a multi-day course without covering their shifts. A few members have told us the workaround that's worked for them is spreading the coursework across slower weekday afternoons rather than trying to clear a full week at once, since the credential's pacing allows for that.
If you're weighing whether now is the year to get a counter lead certified, the recovery in specialty sales is a reasonable signal that the investment will show up on the sales floor rather than sitting on a certificate on the wall. Our Education Committee can walk you through the current course calendar and help you figure out a schedule that doesn't leave your counter short-handed while someone works through it.
The same recovery in specialty demand is putting pressure on producers, some of whom told us over the summer they'd trimmed harder styles from their own production plans during the leanest months and are now scrambling to rebuild aging inventory that takes months to catch up. A trained counter staffer can't fix a thin cave, but they can manage a customer's expectations while the supply side rebuilds — explaining a substitution honestly is part of what the credential trains for, and it matters more when your usual wheel simply isn't back yet.
That's worth keeping in mind if you're on the wholesale side too. A distributor placing orders this fall should expect some producers to still be short on their most aged offerings even as demand for them returns, which is one more reason a counter person who can speak knowledgeably about alternatives is worth the scheduling headache of getting them certified.
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.