Every June, a member who runs the cheese counter at a specialty grocer in the upper Midwest pulls out last year's summer order guide and throws about a third of it away. "People don't want what they wanted last July," she told us. "They want what's good right now, and right now that's changing faster than it used to."
That's not a complaint - it's the reason her case has grown two feet of shelf space in three years while a couple of nearby shops have shrunk theirs. She's been a member for several years, mostly for the credential pathway, but says the real return has been the peer network. "I call another monger in Ohio when I can't figure out why a wheel isn't moving," she said. "That's worth more to me most weeks than anything in a course."
Reading demand instead of guessing it
Her method is unglamorous: she tracks what actually sells by the week, not the season, and adjusts her orders every Monday instead of setting a summer plan back in May and sticking to it regardless. This year that meant leaning harder into soft-ripened and bloomy-rind selections earlier than usual, after she noticed customers reaching for them at the farmers market before her own case had caught up. It also meant paying closer attention to what a recent industry cheese report has been tracking nationally - specialty varieties keep gaining share against everyday cheese even as overall grocery spending gets more careful, and in-store delis in particular have been picking up a bigger piece of that specialty business.
"The trend pieces backed up what I was already seeing at the register," she said. "That's the order I trust - the register, not the article. The article just tells me I'm not imagining it." She's added a small rotating "cheese of the week" tasting station near the register this summer, mostly because she read that sampling programs move product, and says it's paid for itself within the first month in both sales and the number of customers who now ask for her by name.
She's blunt about the tradeoff that comes with faster turnover. More frequent, smaller orders mean more waste risk if she guesses wrong on a given week, and a warm delivery van can undo a good order in an afternoon if nobody's watching the loading dock. Her fix is procedural rather than dramatic: a thermometer kept right at the receiving door, and a firm five-minute rule for anything that arrives above temperature before it's allowed onto the case at all. She's had to send two deliveries back this summer on that rule alone, which she considers a win rather than a loss.
What she'd tell a newer counter manager
Her advice for anyone building out a summer case for the first time is to start with a smaller number of styles you can restock weekly rather than one large order you're stuck selling through for a season. "A tight case that turns is better than a big case that sits," she said. She also recommends keeping a simple tasting log - just a notebook by the register - so a slow week on one style doesn't get repeated the following month out of habit.
If you're weighing your own credential path or want to compare notes with other counter and retail members, our Membership & Outreach Committee keeps a running list of members open to a phone call - hers included. She says she answers most weeks, usually between customers.
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.