“On July 6, 2019, I made my first ever cheese board for my daughter’s 2nd birthday. And I completely fell in love with making them.

 It combined everything I loved: delicious food, art, and most importantly, community. What I loved the most was how when I set it down in front of our friends and family, it immediately created conversations. Relationships were being made over cheese. And regardless of what kind of event was being held, it immediately felt more celebratory because of this board.

I spent the summer making them for friends and family, and a few months later, on October 1st, I decided to make an Instagram account and post every picture of every cheese board I had ever made. I called it “Raleigh Cheesy” and almost overnight, orders started pouring in. I was stunned. We legitimized Raleigh Cheesy as soon as possible and began moving forward with fulfilling orders.

At the end of October, we had reached over 1,000 followers on Instagram and I began teaching Charcuterie 101 classes at venues all over the Triangle region. 

By day, I was a middle school teacher and by night, I was a cheeseboard connoisseur.

By January, I told my school that I would not be returning for the following school year as cheese began to take over my life. Raleigh Cheesy needed to become my full-time job in order to sustain its growth. By then, we had booked over 100 large boards and over 400 people had attended our classes.

When COVID-19 started, we had to drastically pivot our business. Even though larger events and classes were being cancelled, we still wanted to offer a solution to allow people to make their “at home” events feel just as celebratory. So we started offering to-go boxes and were overwhelmed by the response. June ended up being our highest grossing month in sales.

As of now, over 1,000 cheeseboards have been made either by me or my students during class. That’s over 1,000 opportunities for relationships to be made and connections to be formed and over 1,000 people to celebrate with.

THIS is the heart behind Raleigh Cheesy – making any event, big or small, feel celebratory.

Raleigh Cheesy has grown faster than we ever expected and we are in desperate need of a storefront and kitchen space that is entirely ours.

Raleigh Cheesy Store Outside Building

We will be moving into a 900 square foot space in Olive Chapel Professional Park where we will be able to mass produce these boards. This space will allow us to offer catering for larger events as well as to provide ready-made boxes for customers to grab and go whenever they have the craving.

We also hope to partner with local wineries, breweries, and other store locations to wholesale our boxes to them so that they can sell them in their stores.”