Oser Communications Group

16 The Cheese Guide BY LORRIE BAUMANN Yellow Door Creamery, a brand of Schuman Cheese, is innovating to make specialty cheeses more accessible for consumers who are just learning to appreciate full-flavored cheeses. Flavors like harissa, classic Italian herbs and spices and habanero and lime blend with the mild flavor of classic fontina to make cheeses that appeal to consumers' adventurous palates and also add some fun to the cheese case, says Ilana Fischer, Vice President of Innovation and Strategy for Schuman Cheese. Schuman Cheese launched the Yellow Door Creamery brand in 2016 in celebration of the 70th anniversary of the company best known for its imports of classic Italian hard cheeses. Fischer joined the company two and a half years ago as part of an effort to diversify the product line. "Innovation is something that our owner and CEO, Neal Schuman, is really passionate about," she said. "We felt like there are a lot of really wonderful Italian cheese companies. We thought that there was a little bit of a gap in terms of fun." The average cheese case in the grocery store contains a lot of cheeses that, to the inexperienced eye, look a lot alike, and that can make it hard for the consumer to know which to choose, she pointed out. "It's very, very hard to differentiate between cheeses," she said. "People are getting really excited about trying really good cheeses, but it's not made easy for them. It is an intimidating process." Communicating with consumers about cheese can be difficult. Flavors are hard to describe to people who don't have a shared experience of the flavors described by the terms that cheese professionals use to talk about the products, she added. "We thought about, 'What do we have to do to make the step toward specialty cheese more accessible?'" she said. Yellow Door Creamery started with its fontina, a cheese whose flavor is mild but not bland. "We decided to rub it with a variety of different spice blends – make it pop out of the wall of white and add creative and exciting flavors that are new to cheese but not completely foreign," Fischer said. The habanero and lime blend that's hand-rubbed onto one of the three cheeses that currently comprise the brand's fontina collection is an example. "It's an interesting combination, but not a completely foreign combination," Fischer said. "We want to make it a little bit easier for them to make a confident decision." Harissa and Tuscan are the other two flavors that Yellow Door Creamery is offering, although Fischer says that quite a few more are in development. "Yellow Door has won quite a few awards for the rubbed fontinas. One of the nice things about winning awards is that it gives people who are excited to try cheese a note of approval from experts," she added. "It takes away some of the intimidation. I think that awards can do that for cheese really nicely." The hand-rubbed fontinas from Yellow Door Creamery also fit neatly into another recent emphasis at Schuman Cheese – cheese products that appeal to the 96 percent of Americans who snack between meals. The Habanero & Lime Fontina pairs nicely with chips and guacamole, and the Tuscan Fontina is good with hummus. "All of these cheeses do really well served cold, and they bring quite a bit of flavor," Fischer said. Schuman is also the company behind Cello Whisps, shelf-stable cheese crisps made entirely from cheese that launched in June 2015 and have been flying off grocers' snack food shelves ever since. "It took us a few years to figure out how to bake them in a way that would enhance the flavor of the cheese," Fischer said. "We spent a lot of time figuring out exactly how to do that." While the original Whisps were made of the company's own parmesan cheese, Cello is now offering a Cheddar Whisps made of a cheddar cheese developed by Master Cheesemaker Christophe Megevand especially for this product. "It's got all the craveability of a snack cracker, but without all the fillers. The only ingredient is cheese, all made by us," Fischer said. "All of the things that make cheese so great are what big food companies have been trying to mimic with chemicals for decades." She noted that cheese is a great snack for consumers who are looking for a hearty snack that's also healthy. Research from market research firm Canadean indicates that while hunger is an obvious motivation for snacking, consumers also snack to boost their energy levels, to relieve boredom or stress or as a time-saving alternative to a main meal. Their snacks often come with a side of guilt, though, and American consumers are looking for healthier choices to minimize that. Cheese fills that need, Fischer noted. "Cheese has a lot of oomph," she said. "You can throw a bag of Whisps in a backpack and take them on a hike with you." spicy blends b r i n g t h e f u n

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