The Essential Problem for high end retailers of cheese

You probably have friends who cook and friends who don't, but both go to great restaurants.
When the friends who cook tell you about their meal, they go into some detail, for instance, they may have had the monkfish seasoned with lavender and fennel, drizzled with blood orange juice and roasted in a banana leaf. When your friends that don't cook tell you about their meal, they tell you that they had the fish, it was great.

Here's the issue for cheesemongers. The overwhelming majority of customers don't make cheese and what's more, that overwhelming majority haven't even handled cheese.

Thus our cherished lexicon, pressed, raw, washed, etc. is all Greek to them. And if they're Greek and speak their native tongue, then it's all Swahili or some such. Thus they're all in the boat of the person who doesn't cook yet goes to great restaurants.

So for cheesemongers the issue is selling cheese and bringing them up to speed on cheese. It's hard work. Most customers at a cheese shop would like to just say, I'll have what I had last time and hope that you know what that means.

-MJ