Counter Culture: Best Practices for Cheese Signage

Is your cheese case signage as effective as it could be? When you’re too busy to engage with every customer, or when your counter is understaffed, are those cards that identify your offerings working as a silent salesforce? That’s how one prominent cheesemonger thinks about his carefully crafted signs, an indication of the important job he believes they do.

“When you’re super busy, how do you keep people interested so they don’t leave the counter?” asked Ken Monteleone, owner of Fromagination in Madison, Wisconsin. On Saturdays, when a farmers’ market draws thousands to the neighborhood, the Fromagination staff can struggle to keep up. “When the market’s going on, you want those ‘silent salesmen’ as people are waiting for a monger to help them,” said Monteleone.

Independent shops take different approaches to signage, but conversations with some of the country’s top merchants reveal several practices worth sharing.

Fromagination’s cheese inventory is predominantly Wisconsin made, so Monteleone turned to the Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin to help him “tell the cheesemaker story.” DFW stepped up with display-ready pictures and short bios of Wisconsin producers so waiting shoppers can “meet” the people behind the cheese. Not every state has a well-funded resource like DFW, but several regions have cheesemaker guilds and some European countries have export-promotion organizations that can help with educational signage.

Monteleone also enlisted a friend to design two large chalkboard-style signs that now live over the cheese counter. One sign offers advice on how to taste and evaluate cheese. The other, in a grid format, presents recommended companions—from cracker type to beer style—for the main categories of cheese. Perusing these boards preoccupies customers while they wait and almost certainly prompts impulse purchases. For customers who want to take these tips home, the store reproduces the “companions board” content as a handout.

At The Cheese Parlor, a cut-to-order shop in Livermore, California, that is approaching its third anniversary, proprietor Brandon Wood has evolved his signage to be more colorful and communicate more quickly. The neatly printed signs, in an easy-to-read font, include the cheese name, producer name, country, or state of origin (with a country flag), milk type and treatment, rennet type, and approximate age. “We’re proactive about tasting—that’s what sets us apart—but there are customers who don’t want to taste or even talk to us,” said Wood. “Having all that on the signs helps guide them to the right selection.”

What’s missing on Cheese Parlor signage, however, is any descriptive language. “I feel like that takes away from the monger,” said Wood. “Why even be behind the counter if I’m putting flavor descriptors on there?”

In his view, describing a cheese on signage robs shoppers of the chance to form their own opinion. “If somebody tells you how something is going to taste, it kind of steals your experience,” said the monger.

With three stores in the San Diego area, Venissimo has decentralized its sign-making process over its two decades in business. In the past, management created all the signs so they were uniform across all stores. “We moved away from that and made it more informal,” said event coordinator Rob Graff, a longtime employee. Now cheesemongers hand-write their own signs and are encouraged to include their opinions and offbeat humor in addition to the basic facts.

“Customers shop at Venissimo because of that extra information,” said Graff. “Of course we put samples out and engage as much as possible, but having that information makes a shopper self-sufficient. They can be there for 20 minutes and not be bored because there’s so much to take in.”

Does detailed signage reduce a shopper’s incentive to interact with a monger? That does happen, said Graff, but not every customer wants a conversation. “There are people who almost snap at you for trying to engage,” said Graff, “and people who won’t read a sign to save their life.” 

Merchants are split on whether pricing belongs on signage. Wood said one reason he omits prices is because he adjusts them so often. “I would have to change my signs every single week,” he said. He also noticed, at a counter where he worked previously, that some shoppers mistook the per-pound price for the cost of a single piece. But mostly, said Wood, he wants the chance to introduce a cheese before the customer is turned off by its cost.

Rachel Klebaur, proprietor of Orrman’s Cheese Shop in Charlotte, North Carolina, has found a way to manage price adjustments without remaking signs. The store’s handwritten signs are laminated and prices written on the outside with a Sharpie-type marker that can easily be dry-erased. Details that only a handful of customers ask about—rennet type or whether the milk is organic—go on the back side of the card and act as a cheat sheet for mongers.

“We try to keep the information limited, with just a few tasting notes to grab their attention,” said Klebaur. “We don’t want signs to overtake our case.” Brief comments like “melts well” or “pair with jam” help initiate conversations, and for many customers, simple sensory descriptors are enough to seal the deal. Buttery, creamy, and nutty are the adjectives that seem to get the most response. More detailed notes can be problematic with cheeses that change with the seasons or show batch variation, said the merchant.

Perhaps surprisingly, some retailers are unconvinced that signs really do much to educate or persuade. “I think it’s fifty-fifty whether people read them,” said Patty Floersheimer, co-owner of two Goat.Sheep.Cow stores in Charleston, South Carolina. “We think that cheese shops like ours are an antidote to shopping at Costco or Trader Joe’s. When people come in, they want the human interaction. So they don’t read the signs. They just ask you.”

Even so, her store does identify each cheese with laminated signage that typically includes flavor notes, a pairing suggestion or some brief storytelling in addition to the who, what, and where. But her 13 years in cheese retailing has taught Floersheimer that most shoppers are not that interested. They rarely ask whether a cheese is vegetarian or made with raw milk; many seem unconcerned with where it’s from or even who makes it. What they most want to know, said Floersheimer, is “Does it taste good?” and “Am I going to like it?” 

Image: Janet Fletcher/Planet Cheese