8 Cheese Display Dos and Don’ts

Display is of key importance when setting up a cheese counter. Try using whole cheese as the base of your display and then offer a selection of smaller cuts of the same cheese on top. People love to see the whole cheeses but having cut pieces also is very important as a lot of cheeses don’t look too inspiring from the outside and its only when you cut into the cheeses that the customers can see the texture, how blue, or runny the cheese is.

How you present the cheese should be your priority, make full use of the front of the counter as that is where your customers will look first. Cheeses stored at the back of your counter can be easily overlooked, so make sure you don’t have smaller cheeses displayed behind bigger cheeses at the front. This may sound silly but routinely check your display from your customer’s perspective from the front of the counter, remember the display will look very different when you’re serving behind it.

Grouping your cheeses is very important. You should keep your blue cheese, ewes milk, goats milk, semi-soft and hard cheese together so customer can quickly identify the type of cheese they are wanting and see the variety of cheese available with each type.

It certainly helps having a theme in you counter. Viewing your cheese selection should be an enjoyable and speedy experience. Everything should be neatly arranged and labelled with easy to read description and prices. Having a clear theme will help the customers to make their choices easily and also promote new and exciting offerings they may not have originally wanted to try. Why not display your cheese on straw matting or even slate, small things like this can make a biggest difference.

Do

You should always have two cutting boards to hand, one for pasteurised cheese and one for unpasteurised.

Help your customers by offer advice from the begin to help them choose.

Keep your counter clean and organised, no one will want to buy from a dirty cluttered counter!

Invest in good quality wax paper to wrap your customers cheese and why not seal the paper with a sticker with your company’s logo on, before you know it people are proudly sharing their purchase and your company’s logo on social media.

Always speak to your suppliers about POS and sampling support, don’t underestimate how effective it can be to offer the customer a taster of new or promotional products.

Don’t

We also recommend our customers display prices per 100g rather than the kilo, remember that price is always a big factor to a person’s decision to go through with a purchase, £3.25 per 100g is physiologically better than £32.50 per kilo.

Avoid overloading your counter with such a vast range that it is overwhelming for the customer to choose from.

Do not rush when writing you deli tags for each product, make sure the writing is legible, simple and easy to read. 

Image: The Delicatessen at Macknade Fine Foods