Neal’s Yard Dairy A Busy Cheese Beehive

On the south rim of the Thames River, not far from the famous Tower Bridge, Neal’s Yard Dairy is next to London’s oldest food market, Borough Market. As soon as you approach the display window next to the majestic carriage entrance – ochre-coloured bricks and dark blue wood – welcoming sales personnel approach the passersby and offer tastings of the cheese of the day. This particular day, a cheesemaker from the East of England, Simon Jones, is there in person to present his cheese, the Lincolnshire Poacher, cousin to cheddar cheese, made from unpasteurized milk. On a table that spreads out onto the sidewalk, a dozen carefully balanced moulds attract your attention. Further on you can see sixty-odd cheddars lined up along eight rows of ageing boards. The tone is set : warm and generous surroundings.

« Cheese lovers above all »

Waxed concrete floor, white-painted brick walls, wooden shelves : the vast entrance hall offering yoghourts, cream, biscuits, books and a selection of cheese, the buzz of a ballet of the white coats belonging to the sales personnel, all of whom don street-urchin caps and long, blue aprons. The real surprise comes when we venture into the next room, a veritable cathedral of cheese, where it is hard to adjust your eyesight given the abundance of product piled to the rafters. In the middle, a ten-metre long counter stocked with a hundred or so pieces of cheese, skilfully displayed on slates, in pyramid form here, in piles over there, grouped by family and hand-labelled. What is on offer is essentially artisan English cheese. The walls bring to mind those of an ageing cellar with their succession of cheddars and Stiltons, listed by manufacturing date, and slowly ageing quietly.

Behind the counter, a dozen or so sellers speak with their customers. The customers are invited to taste, each cheese chosen to taste leads to an exchange of commentary. « We want to create a kind of osmosis between the seller and the customer and solicit each of the senses », explains in excellent French, Jason Hinds, one of the three managers of this company, founded in the seventies by Randoph Hodgson. « This is why we recruit first and foremost cheese lovers », he adds. The rule at Neal’s Yard Dairy is very clear : the cheese sellers must taste the cheese daily because the characteristics of any given cheese can change from one production lot to another.

« They must have full knowledge of the cheese they sell, repeats Jason Hinds with conviction. The customer should leave with the cheese he likes, without any chance of being disappointed ». Sales are therefore concluded on a made-to-order basis in a buzzingly busy atmosphere (30 people work in the shop) where you don’t have to say « cheese » in order to solicit smiles and where temptation is legendary.

Made-to-Order Sales

With a wide smile and contagious enthusiasm, Michael Jones, manager of Neal’s Yard Dairy’s Borough Market shop (Neal’s Yard Dairy has another shop in Covent Garden, the first in existence) fosters good mood and the shop’s attitude : « My list of today’s Top 5 cheese from the shop (see below) is not necessarily the same as tomorrow’s ! Everything depends on the quality of the ageing process », he assures from his 1,95 m. frame.

A few hundred metres from the cheese shop is a huge space of 15 000 square feet, located underneath the arched brick ceilings of the abandoned Dover to London Victorian-era train line, and where they have their offices, ageing cellars and logistical department.

Jason Hinds proudly shows this set-up which allows him to service both shops, their restaurant clientele and foreign importers. Neal’s Yard Dairy exports to France (weekly deliveries to Rungis for about forty foreign clients), but also to Italy, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland and especially the United States, where it has over 200 clients.

It is Jason Hinds who developed the company’s export business. After growing up in Egypt, where he discovered cheese through… la Vache qui Rit – « I prefered chocolate, but it was difficult to find in Cairo » –, and attending university, he decided to combine his love of cheese and travel by getting into the exportation of English cheese to the US, starting at Neal’s Yard in 1992. Here he learned the subtleties of the profession behind the counter with the other sales personnel, while letting his export project idea take hold. After becoming one of the company’s three associate managers, he helped develop the cheese offer in Great Britain and developed the export business, which today represents 75 % of total turnover.

« Made-to-order sales is at work here as well, he states : every batch sent out is tasted first. It is out of the question that we take the risk of our client having a bad surprise or discovering that the product is not what he expected. » Every six months at the most, all 70 British dairy farms selected by Neal’s Yard Dairy are visited by a member of the company : « We make all of purchases directly, this proximity with the producer is essential. We are not just distributors : our goal is to constantly improve the quality of English cheese, to make the customer feel like he is coming to the production source, without ever being disappointed, and above all making sure there is someone to carry on the tradition of good English cheese. »