THIS IS
AN OLD WEBPAGE
Click here for our new website
http://www.houseofcheese.co.uk
About The
Company
This is a
long established family business run by the partners, Philip & Jenny Grant.
Running our sort of
business requires a heavy commitment of working hours and a love of the
product, which our customers take for granted but also obviously appreciate.
Specialists like us are under pressure from the powerful large retailers
but, because top quality food is made in relatively small quantities compared
to factory-produced food, we feel there will always be a demand from discerning
consumers who want 'real' food.
We work hard all year but even cheesemongers need a break, so we usually take
a holiday in January/February. We close our wholesale business down (and
this internet site) as other retailers can usually order
for three or four weeks during this traditionally quieter period.
Our main activities are retail, wholesale and import. We also smoke cheeses
and have certain products made for us.
Images Of Tetbury,
a traditional
Cotswolds'
market town.
We have a tiny shop in Tetbury that is open from 10 am to 5 pm Monday to Saturday. In 1993 it was voted overall UK winner of the Retail Cheese awards sponsored by 'The Grocer' and 'Dairy Crest'. Our reputation for quality and choice is well known in the area.
We don't only sell cheese! We also offer a selection of chutneys, pickles and biscuits to complement our cheeses. Pates and lots of non-food goodies at great prices complete our lineup.
Import
We directly import French cheeses on a regular basis from the central Paris market, The Rungis.
Our FAQ page may answer any more specific questions you have.
On a lighter note - Twelve Years Ago …
Supposing you bought a cheese shop in the Cotswolds, rather like the idyllic one featured in the television advertisement a few years ago - what would you expect to find? Maybe you would have a vision of a charming building of honey-coloured stone, its old-fashioned bow window looking onto a bustling street - and inside would be a cool room where traditional cheeses sat cheek by jowl …
When we came to look at the House of Cheese in 1989 we had very few pre-conceived ideas, simply because we really didn't know what to expect. Who would have realised that the building, which sat snugly in a row of other shops, was actually in desperate need of a new stone roof and damp-proofing? And that it was impossible to use the existing radiators as the basis of any form of central heating? And that the temperature of the shop, which faced south and was bathed in sun from early morning until after lunchtime, would swiftly rise, given half a chance, to over ninety degrees - enough to produce a fine Welsh rarebit in no time at all!
But we were fired with enthusiasm … not even dampened on moving day when, as we sawed our bed in half on the pavement outside the shop so that it could be carted up two flights of narrow stairs, the local policeman tried to move the removal van on to the end of the street, and a customer, seeing that the shop itself was closed while we tried to push our goods and chattels through the window, muttered darkly "I would have bought my cheese in Cirencester if I had known you were going to be shut!"
To comply with temperature regulations, one of the first jobs (while we were eating all our meals with chopsticks because we had no time to unpack our cutlery) was to have refrigeration and air conditioning installed in the shop. This involved removing the entire front of the shop and propping up the top two floors of the building while refrigerated counters were hauled into place. One bemused customer was heard to remark, staring at what had suddenly turned into a building site "I'm sure there used to be a cheese shop here!" There were also remarks from cheese buffs about how wrong it was to refrigerate cheese and that it should be stored at room temperature - conveniently forgetting that room temperature without the refrigeration was something like Cairo during the summer months!
A new ceiling had to be put in the shop, a new floor installed to make it level throughout and reduce the number of customers who fell over the minute they opened the door to walk into the shop, new shelving installed to replace the sagging shelves held up with sticks … and so on. And meanwhile we were learning as fast as we could about the business of buying and selling cheese!
Fifteen years later the shop is well established and more or less as we visualised it when we bought it. The latest challenge for us is to get to grips with the Internet - and finding a new bed to replace the one we sawed in half all those years ago!
P.S. A new bed
was delivered 1st April 2004 - about 14 years and one week after we sawed in
half the old bed. It's very comfortable!
