Ordinary Gweilo

I was (you will be unsurprised to learn) more than a little intrigued to see that ATV World were showing a programme called "Cheese Wars" on Monday night.  What would it be about?

Well, yes, cheese.  Though it was decidedly light on actual cheese, and was more the story of a group of West Country farmers who had been rather badly let down by Dairy Crest, the company that distributes their cheese to supermarkets – oh, and which also happens to be a formidable competitor, marketing their own brands such as Cathedral City (which is actually not bad for a factory-made cheese). The farmers don’t have any legal agreement with mighty Dairy Crest, who just buy their cheese when they feel like it, and (remarkably enough) they were selling quite a lot of Cathedral City, and rather less of the farmer’s cheese.  

Understandably, the farmers wanted to reduce their reliance on Dairy Crest.  So they hired an expert on cheese marketing, to help them to create their own brand and sell it direct to supermarkets.   Sadly they seemed to have found the Tung Chee Hwa of cheese marketing.  He said that he wanted to get their cheese into 100 supermarkets in the West Country for test marketing, but he managed to get it into precisely zero supermarkets.  His brand ideas were "Bite Me" and "Farmer’s Pride", but these went down like a lead balloon.  Then someone in one of the focus groups suggested "West Country", which is what they eventually adopted.  Perhaps the farmers could have thought of that one themselves…   

Then, having failed to do what he had promised, our marketing man did what he had been told not to do, and talked to Dairy Crest about the new brand – and even agreed to work more closely with them.  Maybe this was the only viable option, but the farmers could have done that themselves, rather than hiring a marketing director on a fancy salary to create a new brand precisely so they were less dependent on Dairy Crest.

Anyway, it seems that they haven’t given up on this idea, and now have a Farmhouse Cheese Makers website.  What I learned from reading the website is that two of the members of the farmers’ co-op are the producers of Keen’s cheddar & Montgomery cheddar – and if you want traditional English cheddar made from unpasteurised milk, these are two of the top names.  Yet it seems that in order to stay in business, they also have to sell cheese to Dairy Crest at bargain prices.  Big business triumphs again.