Evidently you can “buy” my unpublished book used for $999.99 from this online book seller. I am confused by the grading however. If you are going to sell an imaginary book, why not make it “excellent” condition instead of “very good”. I guess they didn’t want to oversell it.
(Real publication date is still March 2010)
I’ve mentioned before that every single wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano comes with a number molded right into the rind. Above the date of production, this tells you where the cheese is from, either a small region or a particular farm, depending on the size. Sometimes I even buy numbers in particular if the parm is notably special, but you can’t go too far with that since the season in which the milk was produced plays a factor too.
However, in 15 years of cheese I never got this number before:
That’s right. 415!* Represent!
It’s already divided the department between those of us who grew up in the Bay Area and can’t stop joking about it, and the transplants who wish we would just shut up.
But we can’t stop talking about ourselves. That’s how we do it in the Sco.
I’m going to have to see if we can get more.
*415 is the area code for SF and Marin now, but it was the area code for the whole Bay Area when I was growing up.
Now Channel 5 thinks our coupons are newsworthy!
Best part is our Rainbow person plugging my book while talking about the cheese department.
Otherwise there are some factual inaccuracies (we started the coupons originally because we were trying to make the weekends less crowded, not because we were having hard times), and it would have been nice to hear the word “cooperative”. But you can’t get mad at free publicity.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged cheese, cheesemonger -- the book, media, rainbow grocery cooperative, san francicso
After 15 years of cheese selling (my anniversary was May 18!), it’s not like I think I’ve seen it all, but I feel like I have a general handle on the questions I will get. Last weekend however, one threw me for a loop.
A guy walks up to me and says, “What’s your margin on cheese?”
“Are you asking as a customer or as a food professional?” I respond. Something about his manner is odd, not the least of which is that there’s no lead up to this question at all and he asks as if it were just as normal to ask this as “where’s the brie?” I ask this question mostly because I want to know if he understands the difference between margin and mark-up,* and also because I want to try and figure out where he’s coming from.
“Food professional.”
“I’ll answer your question, but I find it strange – if you are in the food business – that you can’t tell by looking at the prices. There are not a lot of secrets in the food world. We pretty much all know what each other pay for things. Where do you work?”
“I work at a company that sells products online.”
“Ok, so you want me to tell you how we do our pricing but you won’t tell me where you work or why you are asking. I mean, I’m standing here at my workplace so you know where I’m coming from but you won’t give me any information about yourself and you expect me to tell you what are generally considered trade secrets. Doesn’t that strike you as a little odd?”
“I didn’t mean it that way. I work on the computer systems.”
“Ok, for what company?”
“…” Clearly this is a secret for some reason.
“Ok, here’s the deal, our cheese margins are between 35-50% which is low for the industry. What our margin is depends on how much labor goes into a cheese. Does that answer your question?”
“(Looking at a two-year aged gouda) I just find it strange that you can sell cheese for $15/lb. Why don’t people just buy it at Costco?”**
It’s certainly not limited to selling cheese, but this is how people get themselves into trouble. If he had identified himself as a customer I would have been much friendlier, answering the question after I generally explained the issues behind cheese pricing: high labor to sales ratio, higher cost of refrigeration that regular grocery, need to cover shrink, etc. as well as the fact that pricing also reflects that people can ask questions to workers who get paid a living wage (with benefits) and therefore tend to have more knowledge and experience than people at other stores.
By puffing himself up, he unknowingly violated the unwritten rule of the food trade which is that the first thing you do when asking questions to someone else in the food trade is identify yourself. He thereby put himself in the category of people like the sales rep who once called me up pretending to be a customer asking me about Cheese X*** and saying that we really needed to carry it and that he and all his friends would buy it etc. Liars and time-wasters are the most reviled people in the business. That doesn’t seem like an unusual concept.
*Margin is the percent you make after subtracting the wholesale price of a product. It is related to – but different from – the mark up. For example, if we pay $1 for something and our mark up is 50% we charge $1.50. Since .50 is the amount we net, 33% is the margin because .50 is 33% of $1.50.
**It’s not that this is not a valid question. It’s simply that a cheese professional would know the answer to this. This is food retail 101.
**Since they dealt with him quickly and appropriately, I will not ID the company.
While this is all good news to me, this announcement may sound a little good news/bad news to you folks. But, here it is: I have changed publishers for my book.
The bad news is that it will not be published until early 2010, nearly a full year past the original pub date.
The overwhelmingly good news is that I have reached an agreement with Chelsea Green, a environmentalist press who have put out some of my favorite cheese books (including one that I actually quoted in my manuscript – how incestuous!). I am incredibly excited to be involved with Chelsea Green because I have admired their work for years. Plus, I think they will actually print the book!
I wish my old publisher well. They have put out some books I love and while they are going through some hard times right now, I do think they will eventually rebound. I just couldn’t stay in limbo any longer.
I will link to ordering information and all that when it’s up in a few months, but just wanted to update you all on the state of the Cheesemonger.
Thanks for all your support.
Gordon ("Zola") Edgar 