To all cheesemakers – check this out if you sell your own cheese. This is the first time we have had the opportunity to interview a cheese salesman.

Alan is the Sales Director for Maia Cheese (Pvt) Ltd. You may remember an article he wrote in October, 2021 about his boss Maia, the Georgian lady, who makes cheese in Sri Lanka (click here).

Alan first got involved with selling cheese when he realized the offerings in Sri Lanka were not good (over-salted feta and plastic-like Swiss cheese). He went out to discover if there were any other alternatives and found Maia.

He started off as a sales rep in the southern province and did so well for her, that she wanted him to move to Colombo where her main market is. He moved to Colombo at the end of March in 2021.

He found the main challenge was that Sri Lankans don’t really know cheese. They know the names cheddar and mozzarella, but little else. Those who have travelled outside Sri Lanka are much more knowledgeable, having been exposed to cheese in the countries they have visited.

There is also a small ex-pat community on the island and they have cravings for cheese, but imported cheese is very expensive.

Another challenge is getting the item into retail space and getting paid by the retailers. As Alan always says – a sale isn’t a sale until you get the money.

Marketing Cheese by Alan Stables

I am a 59 year old, enthusiastic English guy living in Sri Lanka.

A son of a dairy farmer from Cumbria, I was brought up on fresh cow’s milk and I understand the importance of the quality of milk as your major ingredient. I live by the principal of “garbage in garbage out” or, as one of my brothers used to say, “You can’t make rats out of mice.”

I vividly remember the milk report when it came in, and how the all-important butter fat content percentage was heavily scrutinized over the kitchen table. Congratulations to New England Cheesemaking Supply Company for providing readers with a Good Milk List.

While my two elder brothers continued the dairy farming tradition, I was sent to a grammar school for my higher education.

My career path started off in the accountancy field, then computing, and then my farming roots took hold and I started an ostrich farm in Spain. (I consider Spain my second home.) It was marketing ostriches that got me to appreciate the importance of marketing.

My rule of thumb is to only spend a maximum of 25% of your income in any new enterprise (but we always spend more, don’t we?) and 50% of that should be in marketing.

That is how important marketing is.

Part 1

Preparing Your Cheese for Success

Make sure you have all the legalities in place and that you are insured against food liability. If someone has a bad experience and blames your product, you need to be insured against any legal action.

Making Your Product

Use some different shapes and colors. Don’t make all your cheeses the same color. Experiment with different coatings such as red wax, bees wax, and even black olive stone ash (used in the world winning cheese – Olavidia by Quesos y Besos). The idea is to make your products visibly appealing.

Examples:

Maintaining Consistency

Now, one of the most important things if you want to advance, is consistency of product.

Let us assume a customer has had an enjoyable experience with your cheese. In fact, let us say they love it. They come the following week to buy some more. That customer expects to have the same user experience. You need to be able to produce a consistent product week in week out.

As milk users, we know that your animal’s milk cycle changes. The quality and color of your milk from the same animals can and will change. It is not all homogeneous. The larger your herd, the less the variability. This is really your first challenge – producing consistency of product.

Once you decide on one way, stick to it. Don’t offer wedge slices one week and then the same cheese in block form the next week.

Using Independent Evaluations

I sometimes use tasting panels. I get a group of people together and ask them to score a cheese from 1-5. I give them some free space for their comments.

This is so useful as you can be surprised about which cheese comes out on top or some of their comments. Our black pepper cheddar was rated higher than natural cheddar and chili cheddar for example. A complete surprise.

I prefer to do several tasting panels to double check the results.

Later, you can use the information and comments to help promote a particular cheese. In a way this is also “a story” you will tell to a potential client.

Comparing Prices

Before you begin to sell, another factor to evaluate is your price. Compare your product to other products. Is it more or less in line with them or do you have something truly special that a costumer will be prepared to pay that extra bit for?

In marketing, 20% of customers will always buy the cheapest product, and 3% will always buy the most expensive. It is the middle ground – those who look for value for money that you want – those who cherish your product and are prepared to pay a reasonable price for it.

By the way, the consumer does not care about you – about how long it took to make, your costs, the trials and tribulations you went through, your own personal challenges. The consumer only cares about your product and if it satisfies his or her desires.

From your point of view, you are selling an experience but the customer is only buying a product.

Part 2

Making Contact

An email list – seems simple now – but record those contacts. When somebody calls you, you want to know who it is before you answer that phone.

Send out a regular newsletter using software such as Mailchimp. You can send emails to up to 2,000 addresses per month free of charge, which is not bad for a start but there is a lot of different software out there. Choose one that suits your needs.

With the ostrich business, I had a marketing list of 3,800 readers and spoke to ostrich congresses all over the world on marketing ostrich topics – Xi’an China, Cairo Egypt, Riga Latvia, Sao Paulo Brazil to name a few. I also organized world congresses on alternative farming topics – ostriches in 2000 and alpacas in 2010.

Nowadays, I also send WhatsApp broadcasts for short quick promotions. That’s free and more importantly, your message goes directly to the recipient.

Focusing on Your Personal Experience

When you do your monthly email, focus on your personal experience. If you are making cheese, explain what you are making, the recipes you are using, and show them pictures of how your cheese is progressing. Your subscribers like cheese (that is why they have signed up) and will love your personal stories. For example, you could try two different sources of milk, compare them and draw your conclusions.

Even better – if you have your own animals, they will want to see photos of them and there is nothing as beautiful as a kid goat. I used to have dwarf Nigerian goats and they would always eat the poor jacaranda plant. Gee, it didn’t stand a chance against my goats. Do you see how I am connecting with my readers?

That is the sort of thing readers love to read. Your readers will remember the trivial facts and if they ever see you, they will ask, in my case, if the jacaranda plant ever survived. You build a connection with your reader.

Being Honest Rules

Having established that connection, you are also building trust. Always be honest. Never fake it. If you have a disaster, share it with your readers. We are all human and your readers will understand.

It is the “everything is perfect” scenario that will cause distrust to creep in. If there is a way they can contact you, for example in a comments section, they perhaps will offer you advice. Other readers will love that, too. You have a problem, they probably had something similar, and somebody is offering a solution. Build that community.

Part 2

Connecting with Your Readers

So, you now have cheese, and would like to sell it. You have connected with your readers via email, now connect with them in person.

A first step would be to try the farmer’s market in your area.

Give some free tastings so the customer can taste before buying. Your enthusiasm about how you made the cheese and its unique flavor is likely to be contagious.

Don’t forget to throw in a story or two but gauge your customer. If they are hooked, you can explain more but if they are short of time and not really interested, don’t push it. Yes, you have to be a bit of a psychologist here like your barber or hairdresser.

Appealing to Your Customers’ Senses

Decide how to hit the consumers’ sensory feelings. With cheese it is fantastic as you not only have visual appeal but taste as well. Double whacko. Add in smell, too, and you have that triple whacko. Once our senses give us that emotional tick, the logic part of the brain kicks in to justify the payment.

Supermarkets make bread to attract our senses – who doesn’t love the smell of fresh bread? Home sellers often have coffee brewing in the kitchen. Your ice-cream parlor may play five slow songs but the sixth is a fast song to assist you in paying and moving out.

All these things are studied. They hit your senses to evoke a particular action. Do the same while selling your cheese and offer something to appeal to their taste buds.

Reaching your customers through their senses evokes the emotional part of your consumers’ brain. Emotions overrule logic. That is why you should never try to reason with an angry person – they are on emotion overload and cannot assimilate logic. You have to wait until they have aired their grievances and their emotions have lowered into a state of relaxation to permit logical reasons to get through to the logic part of the brain.

Part 3

So, you have some experience with selling your product, whether it be online or at a farmer’s market, and want to try to get your product in some stores. After all – they sell on a daily basis, whereas a market may be once a week at most, or even worse, only once a month. So how do you approach a store with your cheese product?

The store owner wants to make money. So, you have to guide the store owner on how he can make money by selling your product.

Offering No Risk to the Storekeeper

At Maia Cheese, our philosophy has always been that if the consumer is unsatisfied or a cheese has expired, or basically for any reason whatsoever, the cheese will be replaced or refunded. This no risk factor to the storekeeper helps. After all what does he have to lose?

Deciding the Retail Margin

Storekeepers wants to know what margin they can make. I find 20% is too low for the storekeeper, 30% is a bit on the high side and 25% is about right. You have to listen to feedback, negotiate and decide. I generally find them to be very open about discussing margins.

Negotiating Payment Terms

A store will have its own way of doing things and it is best to go along with their system. Remember, you want to make it easy for them to host your product.

• Payment on delivery – possible but unlikely. This I do when supplying restaurants but not with stores.
• Bill to bill – when you deliver your 2nd lot of cheese, they pay you for your previous lot supplied as per the first bill. If you deliver every fortnight, you get paid every 2 weeks in arrears.
• On consignment – the store only pays for what they have sold.
• In arrears – the store orders, you deliver and bill them, then you get paid according to their payment cycle. For hotels, they seem to pay the previous month’s bills on the 25th of the following month.

Tolerating No Nonsense

I personally don’t mind when I get paid as long as I know when and they abide by that agreement. The problems occur when they do not honor the agreement, whether verbal or in writing, or delay payment for whatever reason. I have zero tolerance and will go in and retrieve the cheese.

You do not want suppliers where you are chasing up payment as that eats into your valuable selling time. You offer everything – flexible returns and easy agreed payment terms, then they fail you. No way! Get your goods and go. Take the losses.

As a jeweler friend of mine once said to me, “You learn who you can work with and those you can’t.” Not a truer word has been said.

Learning from Experience

When a supplier gives you a check, take a close look at the date. I missed the post-dated check technique several times.

I don’t know why, but the establishments that make it somewhat difficult for whatever reason – eg. they say you need to have a tasting board, or you know they haven’t strictly told you the truth about something or you have to provide a,b,c,d and e – have turned out in my case to be establishments that I withdrew from.

Experience now tells me these are red flags. I sort of prepare myself that this may not work out as well as expected. Sorry to say, the more exclusive the shop, such as a high end delicatessen, the worse they have been.

Respecting Your Own Limits

From my side, I am happy to do a free half day tasting session where I am in charge, if they ask, but that is my limit. My personal batteries falter after 4 hours, as I cannot keep up the momentum that I feel necessary to give the cheese the justice it deserves. So, I am willing to help but know my limits.

I also do not like to give establishments 60 days payment terms as I think that is too long. I declined a supermarket last year that offered 45 days payment terms.
I recently visited the same supermarket this year and I have managed to negotiate 30 days payment terms. This I accepted.

I am also brutally honest. For cheddar, I may say it is not like the English gourmet cheddar you buy in British supermarkets, but for Sri Lanka, it is a real good alternative at 30% less than your imported cheese price.

Here, I have lowered their expectations if they were to compare it to a cheddar they know but I have pointed out that they are getting a bargain. You can nearly always change a negative into a positive if you look for it. It is a real good tactic to practice.

Using Recommendations

You are the cheese seller. You know your cheese better than anybody. You know which is nearly everybody’s favorite. Let the buyer know. Remember – he wants to make as much money as possible on the sale of your products and if you tell him that everybody loves this cheese, he is likely to order more.

One curiosity I have found is that a lot of Westerners love Maia’s Queens Blue, but if that is not to their taste, they love the Smoked Mozzarella. How can that be? No idea. However, it is experience that has shown me.

So how can I use this acquired knowledge? If a customer is buying a variety of cheeses, I ask if they are doing a cheese platter. If they say yes, I recommend that they get both of these cheeses to cover both factions.

Consumers love recommendations. The more tidbits you can feed the buyer, the more likely they can pass them to the consumer.

Buyers also look for advice. You are the expert, so what should he order?

I have had the experience of a good buyer who just doesn’t want to listen to my advice. I know what’s selling but she just has no interest. I have learned in this event to shut up. What I say is not going to help make a sale – in fact, it almost has the reverse effect.

In conclusion, each buyer has their own set of circumstances. Listen to them. A good salesman is a good listener. Tune into what they are looking for. Remember it is about what your buyer wants and how you can help him solve his problems and not what you want to sell.

Selling in Supermarkets

Supermarkets are good for high volume sales but there are many dangers, too. My advice is never to sell more than 30% of your product to one buyer. I know, easier said than done, but it is sound advice I assure you. You have to protect yourself and your business.

Supermarkets are highly difficult to enter.

First of all, they want free samples for the New Product Committee to assess your product.

Then, if passed, they may present you with a contract.

Normally, they ask for a non-refundable deposit. This is money they can use to deduct from should you fail in some part of the contract. It is their insurance policy against your product, so to speak.

In the event that you are unable to supply on time, that space on the shelf is being wasted. Hence, the supermarket will readily penalize you. They have no understanding or desire to understand about the time it takes to make cheese. Nor do they care about how your packaging supplier failed to deliver the necessary packaging material. Simply, if you failed to supply, then you are in breach of the terms of the contract.

Payment terms are also anything from 30 days to 60 days, so you need to calculate this into your cash flow plans.

The larger known supermarkets are more reliable for payment than the small struggling supermarket. My advice is to check with another supplier and ask them about their experience. They may tell you who to avoid too, which is just as important.

With cheese, you are battling for space but your chances are much better than if it was an unrefrigerated product. However, you may have to pay a premium to have shelf space at eye level or at strategic points such as at a corner or at checkout.

The managers pore over the results and any slow moving items are likely to be demoted or replaced, but if your products produce higher than expected sales, the buyers will be quick to contact you.

It is also normal for buyers to be moved around every 3 years to avoid any special allegiance to a specific supplier.

Having worked next to a buying department in a large UK chain, these buyers are truly heartless. They want the product now. If there has been, say, a delay with their regular supplier, the buyer is quick to try and get supplies from different sources. However, let us say the regular supplies arrive, they will cancel the previous order. This is the reality of working with a supermarket chain.

White Labeling

Maia was once contacted to do white labeling. Basically, she produces the cheese under the supermarket’s name – a common occurrence nowadays. Maia decided against it. She had worked so hard to promote her brand name that she felt it would be giving away part of her soul. This is a personal decision which one day you may have to face once you start doing volume.

Part 4

Listening to Your Customers

I hear the same questions time and time again. Do you? Here are some of them:

Do you sell a cheese without salt suitable for 6 month olds?

I think there must be a craze among doctors telling young mothers to offer salt-free soft cheese to their babies at 6 months old, as I hear this question all the time.

Salt is a natural preservative that helps extend the life of your cheese. Maia uses trace salt, meaning we use salt in small quantities, but our cheeses are not without salt.

Moreover, we believe that it is best to introduce cheese when the digestion system is a little bit more developed, say, at least 12 months of age.

We do add that goat cream cheese at 12 months of age would be a good option as cheese made from goat’s milk is high in vitamin A, easier to digest and less prone to non-tolerance.

A person who develops intolerance to dairy products may be able to have products from goat’s milk.

Now analyze our response. We have changed a negative – no we don’t – into a positive – but we can supply your infant with goat’s cream cheese at 12 months which would be a healthy part of the infant’s diet. Also note that we are protecting ourselves. There is less risk when the infant’s digestive system is more developed.

Do you offer cheese slices?

Unfortunately, we don’t. You need a special machine to do the slicing which is prohibitively expensive in Sri Lanka. We sell cheese in blocks of 7 ounces (200 gr) but we can do much larger blocks on request – say 2 pounds (3 kgs).

What we don’t tell the costumer is that cheese slices are already offered in the market and at prices we cannot compete with.

Do you have any grated mozzarella cheese?

Oh my god, there was a surge of calls in December last year for grated mozzarella. The new import regulations in Sri Lanka made it much harder for the cheese importers to import cheese. This resulted in a dire shortage of grated mozzarella. Pizzerias could not get their prime ingredient.

Our stock of grated mozzarella suddenly shrank to nothing, but the phone continued to ring.

Then there was a shortage of cow’s milk. We couldn’t make cheese either! Couple that with no gas as gas distribution was also severely interrupted through lack of foreign exchange, and we were in serious cheese making disruption mode.

To date, I can say thankfully these challenges are being overcome and we hope to be able to manufacture grated mozzarella and other cheeses shortly.

One thing we know though is that the pizza market is extremely fickle. Once the cheaper imported grated mozzarella eventually arrives, they will stop buying from us.

It is also a market that is highly influenced by tourism. Fortunately, tourists have flooded into Sri Lanka this December with many high-end hotels fully booked from mid-December until the new year. For Maia Cheese that has been good news, with orders, for example, from the Hilton and the Marriot.

It was just a shame we had not predicted this.

Alan can be contacted by email at alan@maiacheese.lk or by whastapp on +94 76 630 1069