Who moved the cheese (shop)?
In defiance of every unwritten rule of retailing, Stuart and Connie Veldhuizen are making a nice living operating a cheese store so far from civilization that it practically requires a GPS device to find it. Apparently, you should forget about building a better mousetrap. If you want the world to beat a path to your door, build a better cheese shop.
Stuart Veldhuizen
Until 1990, the Veldhuizens were dairy farmers in Minnesota. But during one of Minnesota’s sub-zero months (I think that really only rules out August), Stuart came across an article in an industry magazine saying that Texas was an up-and-comer in the dairy world. Finding appeal in the idea of living in a warmer climate, the family bought an abandoned dairy operation near Stephenville, loaded their cows into trucks, and moved south.
But five years later, Stuart had news for the family: “I said I’m never going to milk another cow again for the rest of my life.” The milk business was too uncertain for his taste, a boom or bust industry in which the latter seemed to be the norm and the former a rarity. For a while, Stuart did “other things.” But one day in late 1999 he read about a successful business person who kept 13 cows and used the milk exclusively to make cheese. Thus was wrought the Veldhuizen family’s second reading-inspired life change. (My guess is that whenever Stuart settles down with a magazine, the rest of the family holds its breath.)
So it was back into the dairy business, sort of. Stuart took a job at a neighboring dairy operation, but instead of collecting a wage he was paid in calves, eventually collecting 18. Two years later he started making cheese with the milk produced by his new herd, and by 2003 Stuart and Connie were selling their wares at a farmers market in Austin, making the six-hour roundtrip every Saturday. But as word spread, buyers started showing up at the Veldhuizen farm in a remote corner of the county.
That’s when the idea of opening a cheese shop at the farm reared its unlikely head. As seems to be the case with other things involving Stuart, a certain impulse was at work. One day in October 2004, he went to an auction in east Texas. 
He came back home with a huge pile of lumber, as well as an assortment of doors and windows. His greeting, paraphrased here for the sake of brevity and comic effect, was: Hey, honey, I bought us a cheese shop! (My further guess is that Stuart’s attendance at auctions is another hold-your-breath occasion.)
Today, there’s not only a cheese shop and a tiled production room, there is even a cave (left) in which hundreds of wheels of cheese are aged. Tony restaurants around Texas serve Veldhuizen cheese, and the buyers who show up at the shop pay a premium price for any of the 50,000 pounds produced each year. Life is good for the Veldhuizens.
This might be a good place to point out that before the cheese venture took off, the Veldhuizens’ finances were so shaky they couldn’t come up with enough money to pay the power bill one month. Their choice was to start selling cows, or borrow the money. They opted to borrow.
Good choice. No cows means no milk, and no milk means no Veldhuizen cheese. Who would want to live in a world without Redneck Cheddar?
If you can find this sign, you're almost there
Aug 11, 2009 • posted by G.D. Gearino to News • 1 Comments
