The coronavirus pandemic has almost halved the sales of cheese produced by the French monastery. Restaurants closed, and cheese lovers rarely visited the shop of the Cîteaux Abbey monastery located in Burgundy.
As a result, in the basement of the monastery, about 4000 disc-shaped heads of semi-soft cheese with a total weight of about 2.5 tons have accumulated. At first, 19 Trappist monks living in the monastery tried to solve the problem with the supply of raw materials. “We tried to convince our 75 cows to reduce their milk production, but they didn’t seem to understand us,” said Brother Jean-Claude, who is in charge of the cheese trade at the monastery. “But we needed to cut back on cheese, and then we turned to the Internet.”
With the help of Divine Box, the monks put their unique cheese up for sale on the Internet, and the whole operation was appropriately named Operation Cheese. Jean-Claude is confident that the “operation” will be successful. Their cheese won a silver medal at the Lyon International Fair last year and is popular in France and beyond.
Newspaper headline:
All for sale