Business owners have cheese on the brain
As the February 2011 earthquake shook Christchurch to its core, one of Sarah Aspinwall’s first thoughts was her cheese.
Through aftershocks and roadblocks, she found her way back to Canterbury Cheesemongers, the Arts Centre shop she ran with her husband Martin Aspinwall, committed to retrieving her most prized varieties.
‘‘We were open for five weeks and then had to close,’’ Aspinwall said. ‘‘But just for two months. We were actually one of the first central city businesses to reopen after the earthquake.’’
The couple’s cheese journey started in the 1990s, while both working at Neal’s Yard Dairy at Covent Garden in London. They decided to move back to New Zealand together.
‘‘After a while we knew we wanted to do our own thing,’’ Aspinwall said.
‘‘By then we had one kid and one on the way, and we thought maybe New Zealand is the place to do it because there were quite a few good small cheese makers [in NZ] but there weren’t any retailers.’’
Canterbury Cheesemongers started in 2000 from the back of a refrigerated van at the Arts Centre and Christchurch farmers’ markets.
They outgrew their mobile shop and moved into a space on Salisbury St in 2002. Forced to move after the September 2010 earthquake, they went back to where it all began, the Arts Centre.
Cheesemongers specialise in storing, maturing, and selling cheese.
Aspinwall said before they started their shop, local cheese makers had to sell their delectables either directly to the public or to supermarkets. Their shop gave those businesses a place to sell their cheeses.
At any one time it stocks 40 different cheeses, but their regular range was closer to 80.
‘‘It’s great working with small business owners and people who are really passionate about what they are making and producing.’’
She said the quality of Dutchstyle cheese being made by Kiwis was so high they did not import any cheese from The Netherlands.
About half the cheeses were sourced from New Zealand makers, the rest imported from France, Italy, Switzerland and England, among others.
‘‘Most of the cheese makers we work with are family-owned small businesses. A lot of them have their own animals, so they are milking on farm and making the cheese next door.’’
Business had picked up in the last 12 months, Aspinwall said, after some tough years in a retailbarren city centre.
Regular customers and several businesses kept the pair busy, ferrying cheese from their temperature-controlled selling room. The main area was 11 degrees Celsius, with 95 per cent humidity. Another area was colder for maturing blue and soft cheeses.
The shop sold a range of products designed to be eaten with cheese, including breads baked onsite. Some might say their lunchtime cheesy toasted sandwiches are Christchurch’s best kept secret. But keep that one to yourself eh?