It’s ‘only’ roquefort ‘n’ roll... but Tom likes it!
IT’S not a typical career path, swapping a life of touring and recording with a top-selling musician for packing boxes full of cheese on a Welsh industrial estate. But that’s exactly what musician Tom Pinder has done.
Earlier this summer he zipped from Maida Vale Studios and the TRNSMT Festival in Glasgow with Paolo Nutini back to his chilled unit in Taff’s Well, near Pontypridd, to get orders out.
I say chilled, because when I go to meet Tom in the middle of one of this summer’s hot spells, I was invited into a walk-in fridge full of cheese.
It was possibly the best thing that could have happened that day!
Tom runs The Welsh Cheese Company and when he started out, just over four years ago, a heat-relieving giant fridge was a long way off.
Instead, Tom operated out of a small windowless room with a standard kitchen fridge.
Now, he’s recently opened a shop at the same site, but the company also operates from a much bigger unit and, at its busiest, packs off 1,500 orders a day, compared to a heady 14 during their first months back in late 2017.
But how did this classically-trained musician – he plays trombone and piano – come to sell some of Wales’ best cheeses from under one roof?
Tom’s just as passionate about showcasing the best Welsh produce – which comes through his business from across the country and gets put into hampers, wedding (cheese) cakes and more – as he is about getting to hook up with his bandmates and Scottish singer Nutini, with whom he’s been performing since around 2008.
He’s also a founding member of the
Welsh football team’s official supporters’ band, The Barry Horns,
In his pre-cheese life Tom had a band called Adequate 7.
He said: “I came out of university in a band and thinking the band was the important thing. We were a funkpunk crossover, really good fun.
“We very much played the toilet circuit, basic little venues, very much sort of a DIY ethic to it. We toured all around Europe in the back of our van, it was so much fun. We wanted to take it as far as we could get, there was never any realistic idea that it would be a long-term living. I suppose doing that in my early 20s gave me the idea that I didn’t want to go down a conventional career path.
“I did become quite involved in the running of the band and I did enjoy taking that responsibility and being a master of my own destiny, I suppose.
“I enjoy working with myself, I enjoy knowing the effort you can put in is what you can get out of it.”
Tom also had a brief foray into teaching, which he said was “very different and good fun”, but was lured back to gigging and touring.
“When I started the business around five years ago I’d been touring fairly much full-time for the best part of 10 years, mainly with Paolo Nutini’s band since maybe 2008,” he said.
“It was great fun and his last album came out in 2014 and we went around the world.
“I enjoyed it but it was taking me away from home and family and things like that.
“And I wanted to have something that meant I could stay at home and have more of a balanced life.
“The irony is that when you start your own business it turns out you’re here 24/7.
“At peak times I’ve slept in the cupboard for two hours in the middle of the night.”
Nutini recently brought out his first album in eight years to rave reviews, Last Night in the Bittersweet, so Tom has been back on the road, if not quite as much as before, even joining them at Monmouth’s Rockfield Studios – a selection of cheeses in tow, of course – for the recording.
But while music has been Tom’s passion, cheese has long been a tasty part of his life, having grown up next to a dairy farm in Somerset.
“They didn’t make the cheese themselves, but there was a farm just down the road that did and I can still smell that. It was an amazing oldfashioned cheddar and you’d go and knock on the door to get some and they’d have huge wheels on the counter,” he recalled.
“So I’ve always had an affinity for that kind of product. And I guess as you grow up and have some disposable income to try something other than Tesco Value cheddar, you get to know what’s good, regionally, and what to look out for.”
The Welsh Cheese Company works with Welsh producers and brings them together in its shop and as part of its home delivery boxes.
“There are so many good stories around of how these recipes have developed and the background of the farms,” he added.
“Welsh cheese is a fantastic product and we are really lucky with the kind of producers we work with, who are really good at what they do.
“And there’s a manageable amount of producers that we can get our hands on them, make sure we are stacking all the good ones, but at the same time there’s also enough variety to ensure you’ve got great Welsh blues, bries and cheddars.”
He added: “It’s all about getting those amazing cheeses to as wide an audience as possible. And whether that’s through the shop, or online, or also other retail outlets on the wholesale side of the business, it’s great to be telling that story, showing people the background and amazing heritage of those producers.
“A lot of them, Teifi, Cenarth, have been doing it for 40 years or so, since the early ’80s and the rise of milk quotas [when production of milk was limited by government due to rising milk production], they’ve been perfecting their craft ever since.
“We’re so lucky with the quality of cheese producers here in Wales. They are the ones doing the hard work and I just hope we can play a small role in spreading appreciation of what they are doing.”