{"id":30976,"date":"2017-07-11T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2017-07-11T16:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/?p=30976"},"modified":"2019-06-18T11:06:25","modified_gmt":"2019-06-18T15:06:25","slug":"urban-legends-creameries-flock-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/urban-legends-creameries-flock-cities\/","title":{"rendered":"Urban Legends: Creameries Flock to Cities"},"content":{"rendered":"

With locations in Seattle\u2019s Pike Place Market and New York City\u2019s Flatiron District, Beecher\u2019s Handmade Cheese<\/a> is inarguably the most famous urban creamery in the United States. The bicoastal company boasts glass-walled make rooms, inviting consumers to interact and observe. \u201cThe big idea for the urban creamery was to show how cheese is made,\u201d says Beecher\u2019s founder Kurt Beecher Dammeier. \u201c[When Beecher\u2019s launched] in 2003, people didn\u2019t have the same sense of curiosity about food that they have now.\u201d<\/p>\n

These days, Dammeier says, it\u2019s difficult to choose which American wedges and wheels to stock at the on-site cheese shop (besides his own, of course). It\u2019s a testament to how the artisan cheese community has grown\u2014and with it the capacity for more and more creameries to open within city limits across America. These central settings allow cheesemakers to connect with consumers, serve more restaurants, and keep their fingers on the pulse of the food world. But it isn\u2019t all sunshine and steel vats\u2014urban creameries face a multitude of unique challenges, including a daunting one that plagues all city dwellers: high rent.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Fresh

Fresh cheese is packaged at Clock Shadow Creamery in Milwaukee, Wis. Photo courtesy of Clock Shadow Creamery<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t afford to use much space for aging cheese, so we concentrate primarily on fresh varieties that we can move quickly,\u201d says Bob Wills, founder of Clock Shadow Creamery<\/a> in Milwaukee, Wis. Clock Shadow\u2019s ch\u00e8vre, quark, and fresh curds have all netted awards. Genevieve O\u2019Sullivan, former owner of Washington, D.C.\u2019s Sona Creamery, cites overwhelming overhead as one of the reasons for the company\u2019s 2016 closure. The other? Some serious red tape.<\/p>\n

Sona was originally conceived as a simple creamery with a cheese counter and small caf\u00e9, but an ambitious hire convinced O\u2019Sullivan to spring for a full-blown restaurant and wine bar. She rented a 2,500-square-foot space and reserved 1,000 square feet for cheesemaking. The District of Columbia, however, had no formal rules about the production of dairy (since no one had yet attempted it), nor was there a state department of agriculture (as D.C. lacks statehood). So O\u2019Sullivan and her husband, Conan, set out to update the city\u2019s food code while running the wine bar\u2014and their creamery sat idle. The bills piled up; meanwhile, Washington became saturated with dining options\u2014\u201creally good, exciting ones,\u201d says O\u2019Sullivan. \u201cThat\u2019s wonderful as a consumer but not for restaurant owners.\u201d Sona did start producing cheese in September 2015, a year and a half after opening, but it wasn\u2019t enough to keep the business afloat.<\/p>\n

Despite Sona\u2019s shuttering, O\u2019Sullivan remains positive: \u201cIt wasn\u2019t all bad. We met some really great people. I love making cheese . . . we\u2019ve toyed with the idea of getting back into it. We probably wouldn\u2019t have a storefront\u2014that\u2019s where it gets expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, not all urban creameries have storefronts. Kristen Schnepp founded London-based Gringa Dairy<\/a> under a railway arch in 2013 to supply local restaurants and wholesalers with fresh, Mexican-style cheeses. \u201cAs an immigrant to the UK from California, I\u2019m passionate about Mexican cuisine improving on these shores,\u201d Schnepp says. \u201cOne of the missing puzzle pieces is the supply of goods that require [refrigeration]. It\u2019s expensive to import ingredients with a short shelf life, and tricky laws make it even more economically risky.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schnepp saw an opportunity and pounced; today the company turns out queso fresco, queso Chihuahua, and queso Oaxaca and at press time had a cotija in development. \u201cI am proud to be a very small part of the renaissance occurring in the British cheese community,\u201d Schnepp says.<\/p>\n

Proximity to the consumer market is also what lured Ancient Heritage Dairy<\/a> to southeast Portland from rural Salem, Ore. \u201cIt\u2019s easier to distribute our product in the city, and we get better exposure to the public,\u201d explains general manager and co-owner Henry Obringer. They couldn\u2019t have chosen a more fitting location\u2014the Weatherly Building, where the creamery is located, was used as a manufacturing facility for ice cream, butter, and cheese in the early 20th century. Unlike Clock Shadow and Gringa Dairy, however, Ancient Heritage focuses on aged cheeses. The creamery\u2019s lineup, established when it was still located in Salem, includes Valentine<\/a>, a sheep\u2019s milk bloomy rind, and Hannah, a mixed-milk round dotted with protein crystals, both of which took home blue ribbons from the American Cheese Society Judging & Competition.<\/p>\n

High rent and taxes, a lack of space, bureaucratic hoop-jumping\u2014it\u2019s all worth it to make \u201clocal\u201d more than a marketing term. \u201cInteraction with the public is our main driver,\u201d says Willis of Clock Shadow. \u201cAn urban setting gives us improved access to the largest market in the state.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Creameries are eying urban locales over the countryside<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":30979,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[13974,13964,13968,855,13969,13966,13970,13973,13975,13972,13967,2584,13965,1161,13971,13976],"coauthors":[70],"class_list":["post-30976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cheese-iq","tag-ancient-heritage-dairy","tag-beechers-handmade-cheese","tag-bob-wills","tag-chevre","tag-clock-shadow-creamery","tag-flatiron-district","tag-genevieve-osullivan","tag-gringa-dairy","tag-henry-obringer","tag-kristen-schnepp","tag-kurt-beecher-dammeier","tag-milwaukee","tag-pike-place","tag-queso-fresco","tag-sona-creamery","tag-weatherly-building"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nUrban Legends: Creameries Flock to Cities - culture: the word on cheese<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/urban-legends-creameries-flock-cities\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Urban Legends: Creameries Flock to Cities\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Creameries are eying urban locales over the countryside\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/urban-legends-creameries-flock-cities\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"culture: the word on cheese\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-07-11T16:00:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-06-18T15:06:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Beechers_feature-1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"750\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"368\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rebecca Haley-Park\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Rebecca Haley-Park\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/urban-legends-creameries-flock-cities\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/urban-legends-creameries-flock-cities\/\",\"name\":\"Urban Legends: Creameries Flock to Cities - culture: the word on cheese\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/urban-legends-creameries-flock-cities\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/urban-legends-creameries-flock-cities\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Beechers_feature-1.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-07-11T16:00:27+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-06-18T15:06:25+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/#\/schema\/person\/7b8c1d8614f055d0263328d4a870947d\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/urban-legends-creameries-flock-cities\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/urban-legends-creameries-flock-cities\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/urban-legends-creameries-flock-cities\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Beechers_feature-1.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Beechers_feature-1.jpg\",\"width\":750,\"height\":368,\"caption\":\"Beecher's Handmade Cheese in New York City. 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