Welcome!

We are Tailor Kowis and Courtney Johnson, the co-founders of Street Cheese LLC. Street Cheese is a mobile cheese shop that has been serving the Seattle area since 2020. As career cheesemongers, we have a combined 21 years of experience and knowledge gained working with specialty cheeses. We are passionate about cheese and good food, and we love telling the stories of the cheesemakers and farmers who work hard to make the delicious food we eat. 

For the past three years, Steet Cheese has operated from a shared commercial kitchen in Burien and traveled to bring cheese experiences to folks from Woodinville and Bellevue to Renton, Seattle, Tukwila, and even Enumclaw. We have had so much fun meeting new people and collaborating with other businesses while spreading the good word of the curd—and are blown away by how far our little business has come despite being mobile and having been started during the pandemic.

Although we genuinely love traveling to put on events in the name of cheese and will continue doing so, we have come to realize we cannot achieve our business’ full potential unless we obtain our own space for a stand-alone, brick-and-mortar cheese shop. We have so many ideas we would like to carry out, and there are a great many producers we would like to support and represent in the best way possible. We need to pivot to a model that will allow us to achieve more frequent rotation of our selections while enabling us to diversify our offerings and our time behind the counter (e.g., building platters and preparing for events while serving customers who browse in the store while we work). A brick-and-mortar location will also provide our customers with better options to reach us; while our rotating events schedule is exciting and offers many fun opportunities, there is much to be said for a business that folks can come to on their own terms. 

Street Cheese has been actively searching for a building for our full-service cheese shop and gathering space. We are looking in the South Seattle area and in Burien, and we have been working with a couple of commercial real estate brokers to find the perfect spot. While our business has always had excellent cash flow and runs like a well-oiled machine, we keep finding that the only buildings that will meet our needs have needed significant construction build-out before we would be able to open the doors. Since we are looking for a type of space that has not really existed in Seattle for many years, we have not found any suitable turn-key locations. As a business that believes in the power of food to build community, we have decided to ask for community buy-in to help us get to the finish line. This is where you come in!

What We Need

Our goal is to raise $97,000 during our 45-day campaign. What will all of that money go toward? We have a long list of budgeted items that will get us from signing the lease to opening the doors. Some of the larger items we are looking to fund with this campaign include:

• Construction build-out (e.g., drywall, plumbing, HVAC) — the consistent estimate here has been $32,000
• Refrigeration units for the shop (e.g., walk-in cooler, refrigerators, refrigerated display cases) — this makes up $30,000 of the budget
• Sanitation equipment (e.g., hand-washing sinks, a three-compartment sink, faucets with a sprayer, and a dish washer/sanitizer)
• Stainless steel work tables
• Merchandizing units for the shop (e.g., shelves and tables)

The most important need of a cheese shop is its functionality: to keep the perishable products cold and safe, to meet all sanitation regulations and requirements, and to house safe and proper workspaces for us to do our job of serving our customers. We will of course work to make the shop beautiful and inviting, but our first priority is to meet the needs of the cheese and of our friendly health inspector. 

We will try to purchase as many items as possible used from other businesses or at auction, but the one thing we have decided to purchase new to exact specifics is our refrigerated display cases. For as long as we have been in this industry, we’ve counted numerous times where cheese cases went out, malfunctioned, or worked poorly because they were not being used to their correct specifications. While we know a new cooler may also malfunction, it will be under warranty if so and we will have recourse to get it fixed—something we won’t have if we purchase an “unknown” unit at auction.

In addition to purchasing our larger equipment, which makes up the bulk of the dollars on our list, we will also be supplementing our current meat slicer (“Baby Slice”) with a full-size meat slicer that can cut large-format charcuterie and obtaining smaller equipment that we have not needed in the commissary kitchen.

We will be using our current funds to continue purchasing product for sale, as well as to fund our permit applications with the city, health department, and liquor board, and to pay for the myriad other expenses that will come up during the store-opening process.

What You Get

In addition to finally getting a full-service, stand-alone cheese shop that is dedicated to building community around food, we do have some perks that we will providing for those who are generous enough to give to our fundraiser. Some of the perks we are offering include:

• A gift box of accompaniments that go with cheese
• Discounts on in-house class offerings
• Access to a VIP party before the shop’s grand opening
• A private, guided cheese tasting
• Lifetime membership in our Curd Club (like a brewery’s mug club, but for cheese!)

We also hope to add more perks as the campaign goes on.

Please note that if we don’t make our fundraising goal in the next 45 days, any funds that are generously donated by you, our backers, will go into a savings account specifically for the purpose of opening the brick-and-mortar shop. We will still begin the process of opening a shop as soon as we secure a location, but it might take us a little bit longer to open the doors if we don’t raise as much money as we need right off the bat.

Why a Cheese Shop?

We both got our cheese education working in the cheese departments of specialty grocery stores in Seattle, Kirkland, and Burien, and we are intimately familiar with the challenges of trying to sell cheese for a business where cheese is just one of many offerings. One reason we started Street Cheese was because there are very few independent cheese retailers in our area. Other than cheesemakers selling at farmers markets, cheese counters in grocery stores and specialty grocers, and a few market/food hall stands, there is not a stand-alone, full-service cheese shop serving our communities. (Essentially, what we mean here by “cheese shop” is a business is dedicated to having a professional staff of cheesemongers sell cheese and things that go with cheese, as well as to the act of building community around cheese, food, and agriculture through classes and events for cheese lovers and professionals alike.) This is not to say there is anything wrong with the ways people currently buy their cheese in the Seattle area; we believe folks should have lots of options—and we believe a shop like the one we will be opening needs to exist in a major US city.

We have done lots of market research before we started the business, and we continue following market trends for the Seattle area, the Northwest, and the country. Folks’ cheese-eating habits have evolved quite a bit over the past five years, thanks in large part to greater access to specialty cheeses, viral cheese and charcuterie board trends on social media, and increased access online to information about cheese. There is still a lot of work to do to make cheese more accessible and dispel the myth that cheese is “fancy,” or that only folks who live in certain zip codes should have access to specialty cheese. That said, there is a huge demand for good cheese in our region. Street Cheese’s customer base is diverse, comprising folks from all walks of life and many different demographics, and they generally range in age from 24 to 86. Our customers are also diverse on a socio-economic level, which is extremely important to us. We know cheese is expensive, but we believe cheese is for everyone—and it is our goal to make it possible for more folks to have access to good cheese. That is why we started out mobile, and it is one reason why we will continue to offer mobile events after the brick-and-mortar shop has opened. 

In the shop, we will have the opportunity to work with our customers to make sure they have the best experience with the cheeses they take home, and that they know how to maximize every dollar spent. Selling cheese isn’t just about exchanging product for dollars, although that is what we have to do to stay in business; for us, this work is about connecting people with their food and the folks who made it, providing education to those who want it, and helping everyone to feel comfortable at the cheese counter so they can have a good time eating. 

The most important impact of a business like ours is the role it plays in our local food system. Humans have been making and eating cheese for over 8,000 years—not just because cheese is delicious, but because it is an important agricultural product. Cheese is a fermented food that preserves perishable, fluid milk for a long period of time and makes its nutrients more available and easier to digest. The US commodity milk market is volatile and makes it nearly impossible for small dairy farmers to stay in business, as we have seen year after year that small, family farms close in droves and sell their herds to larger, consolidated agricultural businesses. (A recent study showed that most American dairy cows live on massive, industrial operations, and that small herds make up an ever-tinier percentage of the number of cows in our country.)

Cheese adds value to a farm by giving small producers a sustainable source of income that does not depend on the fluid milk market. In Washington we have nearly 50 cheesemakers turning locally produced cow, sheep, and goat’s milk into hundreds of types of cheese. The farms that produce the milk are very often practicing regenerative, sustainable, and organic models of agriculture, even if they don’t have the expensive certifications to prove it. We are dedicated to helping our local cheesemakers get their product to market. As cheesemongers, it is our job to tell our customers what makes those cheeses so special and why they are so important to our state and region’s agricultural economy. It is the job of our business to ensure that our producers and farmers can continue to stay in business and support their animals and their families for as long as possible. For, as we learned during the pandemic, if you don’t take care of your local producers, they will not be there when the global food supply chain breaks down and you need them most. We must support our local producers all the time!

How Can You Know If We Will Be Successful?

Street Cheese began with us each pitching in $250 so we could get a business license, a health permit, and start buying cheese from our distributor to sell from a commercial kitchen. Everything we have done since then has been intentional and backed up by lots of thought, research, and deep conversations with our customers. We have gone from building platters and doing home wedge delivery, to putting on three to four pop-ups a week, to curating a slate of tastings and classes across our metro region. We strive to highlight our local cheesemakers first, and then build in a selection of high quality domestic and imported cheeses, humanely and sustainably produced charcuterie, and high-quality accompaniments to back up the cheeses. We have built relationships with more than 20 businesses to put on cheese-focused events, and we are constantly evolving our offerings and rotating our selection. We are here to play a role in strengthening our regional food system, as well as to continue participating in a trade we both love so much. In a brick-and-mortar shop, we can do so much more.

While we are first-time business owners, this is not our first rodeo with opening a cheese counter. We have both been involved with opening new cheese departments for local grocers, and we have visited cheese shops across the country and in Europe as we sought inspiration for our own shop. Additionally, we are well-connected within the cheese community locally and nationally, and we are not afraid to ask for help when we need it. One of us is even a reigning champion American cheesemonger who competed in the world cheesemonger championship in France (Le Concours Mondial du Meilleur Fromager). If that is not an expression of how deeply we are determined to have our business succeed, then we don’t know what is.

We like to think of Street Cheese as a combination of our unique ideas, the love for artisanal cheese, and the needs of our loyal customers. We listen to what the people want. There are going to be times when we can’t fulfill certain requests, but we can do our best to make up for it with something we can do. We also want to offer support and space to the well-established businesses who have helped us get to where we are today, in addition to going on to support future baby businesses who might need room to grow the same way we have. We are looking forward to becoming more deeply rooted in the small business community that has lifted us up these past few years, and we can’t wait to get to know more of our customers by name as we guide them on their cheese journey each time they come into our shop. 

Risks & Challenges

Street Cheese is a pandemic-born business. We have faced many uncertain situations and challenges, evolving along the way with “the new normal.” We have pivoted, learned what works and what doesn’t, and followed our customers’ needs. We believe this experience has made us resilient, creative, and ready to face any challenge the business throws our way. We will absolutely make mistakes, but we will also be ready to learn from them and grow. We recognize there are risks to the commitment of building a brick-and-mortar business over time, but we are ready to accept the challenge and put down roots. 

Some challenges we know we will face in the coming months include interacting with the health department and city code enforcement offices to get our space right ahead of opening, securing the correct refrigeration units for our shop and getting them up and running properly, and maintaining our inventory while we gently decrease the number of events we are doing in order to get this store open. Those are not small challenges, but they are ones we know we can handle.

As two women who have worked in the specialty food industry for over a decade, we have the ability to get creative with driving sales and bringing folks to the counter. Cheese changes with the seasons and so our offerings are always changing with them—as are our ideas and our collaborations. With our love for community mixed with our passion for really good food, we will stop at nothing to keep Street Cheese going. 

Other Ways You Can Help

Times are tough, and we understand if you cannot make a financial contribution. There are plenty of other ways to help us achieve this dream! Please share our campaign on your social media platforms. Tell you great aunt who loves cheese, your cousin who’s really into cooking shows, heck–let your co-workers so they can pitch in for a new happy-hour gathering place at the cheese shop! You can also attend our events and buy cheese from us, too. We are always updating our website’s events calendar, and we keep our online cheese shop up-to-date with our current stock. 

We are absolutely ecstatic to finally be in at this point in our business, and we are excited to embrace the future with open arms. Whether this is your first time learning about Street Cheese or you’ve been on this journey with us since the beginning–from the bottom of our hearts–we thank you for your love and support. Cheers to cheese!