Focusing on a quality product, branding and not over-extending the company is the recipe for success at Cashel Blue cheese, writes JOANNE HUNT.
‘WHAT’S SO special about the cheese-makers?” asks a character in the film The Life of Brian on mishearing the Sermon on the Mount in praise of “peacemakers”. But the ability of one Tipperary cheese company to triumph in a recession proves that blessed indeed are the cheese-makers.
For the Grubb family, making a living from an 80-acre dairy farm in the 1980s was no joke. With butter mountains and milk lakes dotted across Europe, they knew they needed to add value to the milk they produced.
And so Cashel Blue, Ireland’s first blue cheese, was born. Making cheese at the kitchen table and maturing it under the house, the Grubbs quickly realised they were on to something.
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