Cheese Making Business Plan, With a 12-Month Projection

A cheese making business plan sets out the cheeses you'll make and who buys them, what each costs from the milk up, the make room, the aging cave and the licenses, and the first year month by month. Cheese has a quirk most food businesses don't: an aged cheese is made months before it's sold, so the milk and the hours for the first wheels are spent, and sit on a shelf in the cave, long before they earn anything. Fresh cheeses and curds sell the week they're made and carry the business while the wheels age. In the example below, a small creamery in the Berkshires sells fresh goat cheese, aged tomme cut at markets and as wheels to shops, and cheese curds, makes a profit from month 5, and ends the year about $18,600 ahead on $83,000 of sales, after paying $20 an hour for the making. Below is a description example, each part of the plan, the rules, the projection, the startup budget, and a free template.

The short version

• Describe the business in a paragraph: the cheeses, the milk, where you sell, the goals.
• Cost each cheese from the milk: yield is the number that matters most.
• Sell fresh cheese and curds from the start; aged cheese starts selling when the first wheels are ready.
• Budget the cash that sits in the cave: three months of milk and hours before the first wheel sells.
• Cheese sold across state lines must be pasteurized, or cured as its standard allows, such as 60 days for cheddar.
• The vat pasteurizer is the big purchase; buy used if you can.
• TaroStack keeps every wheel as a lot from the milk to the customer. More below.

Part 1: the business description

Housatonic Creamery, a made-up creamery in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, I use in these examples, writes:

Housatonic Creamery makes fresh goat cheese, an aged cow's milk tomme and cheese curds from milk bought from two local dairies, in a licensed make room with an aging cave, sold at farmers markets, to cheese shops and restaurants, and online in New England. Every wheel and tub carries a lot code.

Part 2: what each cheese costs

The milk line is the yield at work: in the example, a gallon of goat milk at $6 makes about 1.25 pounds of fresh cheese, five 4-ounce tubs, and 10 pounds of cow's milk at 35 cents a pound make a pound of aged tomme. Yield moves with the milk through the year, so it's measured on every batch; how is in batch yield formula. The tomme's 18 minutes include its share of making, pressing, and turning and brushing in the cave for three months.

Part 3: customers and prices

Cut tomme at a market leaves almost twice what a pound sold as a whole wheel to a shop does, but shops buy every month and put the cheese in front of people who don't come to markets. Fresh goat cheese is the steady seller, and curds the cheapest to make. How long each cheese keeps is worth testing rather than guessing; a shelf life study template sets one up.

Part 4: pasteurization, aging and licenses

Federal rules forbid milk products in final package form for direct consumption from moving across state lines unless they're pasteurized or made from pasteurized dairy ingredients, except where a regulation provides an alternative, such as curing certain cheeses (21 CFR 1240.61). The cheddar standard, for example, requires a cheese made from unpasteurized milk to be cured at no less than 35 °F for at least 60 days (21 CFR 133.113). Fresh goat cheese can't be aged that long, so this plan pasteurizes all its milk in its own vat, which also lets it sell online in other states. A cheese plant also needs a state dairy license and inspection, with lab testing of milk and cheese, and the make room and cave are built to pass it. This is general information, not legal advice.

Part 5: the first year, month by month

Fixed costs are $2,125 a month: the make room and aging cave ($1,200), utilities ($300), insurance ($100), the dairy plant license and lab tests ($150), market fees ($150), delivery ($150), the website and online shop ($40), and software and card fees ($35). Sales start at 15% of full speed and reach it by month 11. The projection starts when the first wheels are ready; the three months of making before that are in the startup budget:

The year's sales are $83,000 and the profit $18,635, on top of $20 an hour for the making. Every month, three months of wheels sit in the cave at their milk and labor cost, which is money the business has spent but can't use; at full speed that's about 1,200 pounds of tomme, roughly $11,000 at cost. How to keep each wheel's lot straight is in lot tracking spreadsheet.

Part 6: the startup budget

Get the template

Download the cheese making business plan workbook. Four sheets: your cheeses with price, variable cost and monthly volume at full speed; the year, month by month, with sales, profit and cash; your fixed costs; and your startup budget, the cheese aging in the cave and working cash included. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Where this stops working

Milk from two dairies with its own lots and test results, a batch every other day, 120 wheels in the cave at different ages, fresh cheese with short dates, and shops ordering wheels of a given age. A notebook can't say which wheels are ready next month, which milk lot went into a wheel, or who got cheese from a batch if a test comes back bad.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack keeps every wheel as a lot from the milk to the customer.

Batches from the milk. Each cheese is a recipe, and units convert: milk bought by the gallon or the pound, cheese sold by the tub or the pound. Recording a make takes the milk, cultures and packaging off stock from the lots used, at what you paid, notes the lots automatically, and divides by what came out, so a batch with a lower yield shows in its cost.

Wheels as lots. Every batch goes into a lot with its make date, and wheels waiting to age can be held apart from what you can sell. One report walks a milk lot to every batch and every customer who got cheese from it.

And the shops' orders. Shop and restaurant orders are sales orders that show whether the cheese is ready while you're still typing, the reorder list works in days of cover, and margins are reported by product and by customer.

Recipes, batches, lots, recalls and margins by product and customer are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.

Questions people also ask

Is cheese making profitable?

It can be, once the first wheels are aged and selling. In the example, a small creamery ends the first year about $18,600 ahead on $83,000 of sales, with $20 an hour paid for the making.

How much does it cost to start a cheese making business?

In the example, $32,900: a used vat pasteurizer, a press and molds, an aging cave, sinks and tables, a cooler, licenses, $6,000 of milk and labor for the first wheels while they age, and $4,000 of working cash.

Can I sell raw milk cheese?

Federal rules allow certain cheeses made from unpasteurized milk to be sold across state lines if they're cured as their standard requires, such as at least 60 days at 35 °F or more for cheddar. Sales within a state follow state law.

How much cheese does a gallon of milk make?

In the example, about 1.25 pounds of fresh goat cheese from a gallon of goat milk, and a pound of aged tomme from 10 pounds of cow's milk, a little over a gallon. Yield varies with the milk and the season.