Cheese Shop Mythbusting Episode #1--There's nowhere to park in St Paul

Let's get one thing straight before we even start: Parking in Minnesota is never ever difficult.  This may not win me many friends but I am letting you know that until you have tried to park in New York City you don't really know about painful parking experiences. 

Folks here are spoiled.  I can't tell you how many people have come into the shop for the first time because they told me that there was finally some place to park.  What they mean is that the spot directly in front of the cheese shop was unoccupied. 

When I tell customers about the FREE lot right next door they always act confused and tell me that it is a Macalester lot and they aren't allowed to park there.  Yes, there is a Macalester lot next to us but then next to that lot is a FREE lot which almost is never more than half way full.

Parking abound here in St Paul.  Lots and lots of parking.  So don't let that be an excuse for not visiting our shop.

TJ Maxx killed the gourmet store?

On Sunday night I found myself lost in a TJ Maxx the suburbs. It's a long story but it involves a quid pro quo for watching the Patriots blow a game against the Colts.  As I was wandering the aisles I came across this sign.  Now it is no great mystery to me that TJ Maxx carries some food items.  I mean, who can't help but be enthralled by a store which sells first cold pres olive oils directly across from women's undergarments (I resisted taking that picture for obvious reasons).
First thing first.  TJ Maxx actually carries at least one of the same items as one of my stores.  I am not going to say which one, but I will say it is half the price I charge.  They also carry quite a few items that I have looked at for my shops but have passed on for one reason or another.

Okay, with that out of the way let's deconstruct the TJ Maxx sign.

1.  They only carry fresh gourmet food.  I am guessing that means none of their items are expired.  Well, okay, but some of their packaging looked like it had seen a few wars.  Fresh is a weird term to use to describe dried goods, but whatever.
2.  They buy in large volume directly from "our manufacturers".  So weird and awfully misleading.  Manufacturer implies that someone is making an item.  I am highly doubtful that TJ Maxx is buying the item from the actual company making the product.  Even money says their manufacturer is someone who has bought up close out products from retailers who have gone out of business or who have unloaded unsold product.
3.  Yup, they do carry the same food as some gourmet food stores at much lower prices.  But do you know what you are buying?  Is the clerk at the changing room going to be able to tell you the differences between the Spanish olive oil and the Italian one?

I guess it all comes down to the priority that you place on knowing about your food.  If price is most imporant than I am never going to win against TJ Maxx.  But if you want to make an informed decision then I suppose we're pretty good at that. 

Does this seem too obvious?  Let me explain how we run our business.  Some of the products we carry we can buy from a variety of sources.  Some are cheaper than others.  But we will always buy the product from the distributor that can help us make an informed decision for our shop--regardless of price. 

And I suppose the good news for us is that it seems highly unlikely that TJ Maxx will ever have the same product twice...

RIP Premier Cheese

The Twin Cities cheese world was abuzz yesterday with the depressing news that yet another one of our brethren has succumbed to the wiles of the economy.  This is very, very upsetting.  First E's Cheese, now Premier Cheese.

Premier Cheese is just 6 blocks away from our France 44 mothership.  Ken Liss is a passionate advocate for cheese and I've had several conversations with him about the product we share in common.  There is no doubt that Ken believes strongly about selling every one of his customers the right piece of cheese for them.

No one likes to see any small business fail.  Of course this resonates more so with me because we run the same kind of shop. 

I still maintain that I want to see more cut to order cheese shops in this town.  I know of a couple of new cheese shops in the works (remains to be seen if they will be cut to order) and I hope that they will fill the huge void left by the closing of Premier and E's.

In the meantime we will continue to do our best to educate our customers about the value of specialty shopping and provide them with great product and superb customer service.

PS:  Heavy Table was the first to report the closing of Premier.  A few readers posted comments and one of them alluded to the fact that cheese is an "upmarket" item.  This is fodder for another post and I plan to make the argument that cheese is not in fact an upmarket item.  That's right, I will posit that something I sell for as much as $38 a pound is not upmarket.  So stay tuned.

Strathdon Blue is my kind of blue

Way, way, way up at the top of Scotland there's a small dairy right on the North Sea. How anyone managed to find this cheese up in parts unknown (and I have actually been to this part of Scotland and I assure you there is not a whole lot there) is beyond me, but I am glad that they did.

Song and I popped this cheese out of its beautiful blue wrapper this afternoon and were immediately smitten. Gooey and soft, it is nothing at all like the ubiquitous Stilton. The cheese is made using a mixture of Ayrshire (Scottish breed) and Holstein-Friesian milk.

Like all of our other cheeses from the British Isles, Strathdon Blue comes to us via Neal's Yard Dairy in London.

Fondue Party?

So it looks like we're going to serve up some fondue this Friday. I don't know anything about fondue. It's crazy that someone who works in a cheese shop is completely ignorant on the subject so I decided to wander out into the internets to find out some little known information about fondue.

First of all, what does fondue mean? Those of you guessing "bacterial petri dish" are close but that is not exactly it. It means "melted". I checked more than wikipedia on this one and it seems like it is the right answer.

The little pot that holds the melted is called a caquelon and the burner is called a rechaud.

There is a bit of etiquette involved. No double dipping! Dip once and only once. Allowing your lips or tongue to touch the dipping fork is considered rude. So don't even think about it.

Apparently my fondue party is not considered a success unless you are talking about it for weeks and weeks afterward. So you better have fun and talk about it for a long time.

Other fun facts:

• The first reference to fondue goes all the way back to Homer's Iliad
• Fondue was originally conceived as a preservation method. Take your really old bread and really old cheese and make it delicious by melting the cheese and softening your brick like bread. Genius!
• Tradition says that if the item you're dipping comes off of your fork: Men: Next round is on you and for Women: Kiss the man to your left (wacky, wacky internets, who knows if this is at all true)

No love from Minnesota Monthly (again)

Another "Best Of" issue of Minnesota Monthly and another snub for the cheese/specialty food shops around town.

I have some issues with Best Of compilations in general as long term blog readers may remember. Of course since then we were named "Best Cheese Shop" by the City Pages but that still hasn't really changed my opinion about best of lists.

I'm not actually positive why I care at all about this topic. Obviously it gnaws at me a little bit or I wouldn't be blogging about it two years in a row.

Here's the point: People like lists and they like to be told what is good and what is bad (I will admit that I am amongst those that enjoy the occasional list of the best cat groomer or forklift operators). There are so many choices out there that we look to magazines, newspapers, blogs, and other reviews to tell us where we should spend our precious (dwindling) discretionary income and scarce free time. I get it. Totally.

After the City Pages "best of" we saw a nice increase in business. So these editions obviously have some influence. So why isn't Minnesota Monthly using their influence to promote specialty food shops? They have a robust Food section with arguably the best known food critic in town.

I'm a broken record with this point but I can't resist beating it to a pulp: nothing beats shopping at a specialty store. I'm waiting for someone to make the cheese shop version of "High Fidelity". Actually I don't think of buying cheese as an elitist event. It's definitely a luxury in the sense that it isn't a staple like milk or sandwich bread (or in my case organic pop tarts) but it is not necessarily something only for the wealthy or the foodies among us.

I think both of our stores are very fun places to shop. All of our staff are people that I wouldn't mind sitting next to on a 6 hour bus ride to Chicago (though 9 hours might be stretching it). We have products that we're the only in the midwest to sell and some house made items that are just utterly fantastic. I haven't even mentioned our sandwiches yet...

I don't need to be validated by a magazine to know we're doing a good job, we have lots of loyal customers who tell us when we do something well or when our performance is less than stellar. That's not what it is about. Like I said, we may not even be the best cheese shop on France Ave or the best on Grand Ave.

Maybe there is some other thought behind the MinnMo "best of" edition. What that is I couldn't even speculate. Just be mindful that there is a whole world beyond what exists in those lovely little lists.

What it takes to work in the cheese shop + McClure's Pickles

Every week the cheese shop staff is given some sort of assignment. It is all part of the continuing training that happens here. We actually take customer service incredibly seriously and in the ideal world every one of the staff will know as much about the products we sell as I do.

With that in mind, this weeks' assignment involved everyone doing some research on a product we sell in the shop.

MC is a Saint Paul employee and she was assigned McClure's pickles. I think I'll let MC take it from here:

"McClure Pickles: Made in Detroit & Brooklyn by a pair of brothers (the McClures) who are genuinely passionate about pickles. One brother (Brooklyn) is a professional clown. In a serious, theatrical sort of way. They've recently been certified kosher. (And they have a mildly shocking advertisement video on their webpage--maybe cheese blog material?)"

Without further ado: