Artisans of cheese find a better whey

Michael Cains likens it to the beer fridge at his local bottle shop. The Australian cheese scene, that is.

Cressida Cains at the NSW Southern Highlands award-winner Pecora Dairy, which has adapted to lockdowns by selling more online. Picture: Richard Dobson

Michael Cains likens it to the beer fridge at his local bottle shop. The Australian cheese scene, that is.

The decorated NSW Southern Highlands cheesemaker behind Pecora Dairy says the craft brewing landscape has exploded with choice and quality over the past decade — and cheese is set to follow suit. “The independent craft beer scene is unrecognisable to what it was,” says one half of the award-winning Pecora partnership alongside wife Cressida.

“We’ve lost the cultural cringe with wine and beer and I think Australian cheese is on the precipice of that kind of change.”

Cains, who makes a unique-in-Australia feta-style cheese from unpasteurised sheep milk, is one of a large group of independent cheesemakers around Australia who has kept his business afloat during the pandemic shutdown via some nimble marketing and logistics work by online cheese retailers who have seen their businesses soar at a time when producers were left with a glut.

Cheese Therapy, a Queensland-based company selling curated cheese boxes all around Australia, saw sales in August that were double its entire turnover for 2019. CEO Sam Penny says his business is on track for annual sales of $10m by Christmas which, he says, will make Cheese Therapy the third-biggest cheese retailer in the country behind the two major supermarket players, Coles and Woolworths.

Out of Melbourne, another more specialised cheese retailing enterprise, Mould Collective, kept orders up to niche producers with its own curated cheese box sales when restaurants, delis and caterers all stopped ordering.

Mould’s Dan Sims says he could sell 3000 boxes a month with little trouble but to go to a producer and ask for that kind of quantity would put a lot of pressure on them.

“It’s not just about moving boxes,” he insists. “Moving boxes doesn’t necessarily mean long-term wins. And we don’t ask them (the producers) for discounts. It’s like wine; when you discount wine it becomes a race to the bottom.”

Pecora’s Cains says his cheese sales halved overnight before online business saved the day. Importantly, he says valuable “eggs in one basket” lessons have been learned by the artisans of his industry, who will seek a diversity of channels to market from now on.

Australians have “pivoted” to local cheese, he says, and been happy with what they are finding.

Bruny Island Cheese boss Nick Haddow, who was running a strong online direct sales business before COVID, is also a partner in Mould Collective. “The really interesting thing to ask ourselves at the end of all this will be what have we learned from it all,” he says.

“As a small producer in an isolated location, it’s actually been a great way to tell our story. For people to connect to our place,” says the southern Tasmanian producer.

“We are lucky that we’ve been in that direct retail space forever. That was always our model.” Haddow says over the past six months his online sales have doubled over the same period last year, “sometimes 50 per cent more.”

“It’s been terrific … But we have had to work twice as hard.”