Mike's Fancy Cheese

Idea

Introduction

Mike's Fancy Cheese is an award-winning cheese-making business based in Northern Ireland, run by a qualified cheesemaker with experience at some of the UK’s leading dairies.

We are producing and selling Northern Ireland's first and only raw milk blue cheese called Young Buck. It is produced from a single herd of award-winning Holstein-Friesian cows based in Newtownards, County Down.

Young Buck has only been available for two months and is already available in several of Northern Ireland's top restaurants, as well as at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Dublin. It is also beginning to gain reputation down in the Republic of Ireland with Fallon and Byrne, one of Dublin's finest cheesemongers stocking it.

Recently on a visit to London we have received fantastic feedback from big supporters of ours Neal's Yard Dairy and we are looking to up production to meet their demand.

We are also looking to set up online sales offering a variety of cheese to the unserved customers of Northern Ireland.

Intended impact

I believe in the values of small production by many.

I have created an unhomogenised product of which I can be very proud, rooted in Northern Ireland but sold across the UK (and eventually internationally).

I am making cheese and sell it direct to the public, whilst showing them every aspect of the cheese-making process. By doing this I hope to instill a pride for Northern Irish produce and create a culture of secondary production and adding value to our great raw products.

I pay our farmer a very fair price for his milk, enabling him to produce the best quality milk from very well-kept cows.

At the proposed cheese-tasting events I will show people the array of tastes that can be made from the same raw ingredient and show them the joy of tastes and textures of cheese.

Substantial accomplishments to date

I am a fully qualified cheesemaker,with a diploma in dairying from the School of Artisan Food.

We have a fully fitted unit,capable of producing 22 tonnes of cheese a year. All equipment has been bought with the previous round's funding.

Young Buck recently won Silver Medal at the 2014 Irish Cheese Awards, second only to the long-established Cashel Blue.

We have already achieved an extensive list of amazing stockists. Many of Northern Ireland's top restaurants have us on their cheeseboard: James Street South,Hadskis,Ox, Bistro Este, Balloo House, Poacher's Pocket, Browns and Deanes to name but a few. And delicatessens such as Sawyer's, Sheridan's and Arcadia are selling our cheese direct to the public.

We are beginning to move down south also recently stocking one of Dublin's finest cheesemongers Fallon and Byrne and a number of restaurants including fine dining chain Ely and Michelin-starred l'Ecrivain are also stocking us.

I featured on the radio 4 food program talking about the rise of food in Northern Ireland which can be found here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b040h55g (I don't always look that grumpy).

We are now getting recognition in mainland UK, and are already stocked by cheesemonger of the year Courtyard Dairy, and hope soon to be available at Neal's Yard Dairy.

Monetisation strategy

Cheese making can be a profitable business. However, the start-up costs are high. Despite that, there is a great potential mark up from the price of milk to the price of cheese at the end. Also, I expect to be able to reduce the overhead of wages as most work can be done by me at the start. The more direct sales than can be made, the better, so as to cut-out the fees of wholesalers. I plan to buy milk at 40p/l and sell my cheese for approximately £11/kg wholesale and £24/kg direct.

I also plan to hold monthly cheese-tasting events for 40 people at a planned charge of £15 a head. The first of which was a big success.

I think these events would not only give the public a greater awareness of my own produce, but help spread the popularity of artisanal foods generally. We have a mixture of direct sales and wholesale. Moving forward we also are looking at setting up an online store.

Use of proceeds

We are already fully functioning and we are looking to increase this production as smoothly as possible to make sure no quality of the product is lost.

The proceeds of this round of funding are to buy more milk to up production, buy shelving to store more cheese and to employ another member of staff to enable us to up production and also attend more direct markets and events.

It will also be used to buy packaging and set up an online store to sell the cheese direct.