Gouda for business.

It's all about trust.

This philosophy has taken the Schep family a long way since they opened the doors to their Gouda cheese factory at their Thunder Oak Cheese farm, 20 kilometres southwest of Thunder Bay.

The Schep family emigrated from Holland to Canada in 1981 and purchased 500 acres to start a dairy farm. Over time, they experimented with making cheese for themselves and eventually, with the support of their five children, decided to open a cheese-making operation on a larger scale.

The career direction they chose is no surprise, as both Margaret and Jacob come from families who farmed and made their own cheese back in Holland.

"It was very common in the early days (to make cheese)," Margaret says. "Around Gouda, a city in the south part of Holland, everyone made cheese; mostly for their own use."

Margaret's mother also won the World Champion Cheese Contest in 1975, for her Gouda.

Once the idea "grew on them," it took about two years, a lot of paperwork, red tape and some doubtful moments before it really got rolling.

But once it did, the demand was instant.

"We opened up in December and thought we had a good supply of cheese," says Margaret. "Before Christmas, we had to close the store, because we sold out. Then we understood there was a market."

The business attracts a lot of American tourists, too. The factory, which is located right on the farm, is set up in such a way that people can come and watch the process of cheese-making through large windows on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

On any given day, they make between 130 and 150 kilograms of cheese.

According to Margaret, it is an open area for viewing, but the benefit isn't the customers' alone. When people come to the farm and see how the operation uses milk from their own cows fed with home-grown food, it builds up a trust with the customer and conveys the level of quality for which the family strives. The cheese is completely natural, with no preservatives or colouring.

"That is how the people in the early days lived, and that's how we should go back again."

It is this natural, back-to-basics view that has expanded their sales to a store in Toronto called Whole Foods, an American-based company that promotes natural and organic foods. They will also be supplying cheese to the newer Whole Foods store in Oakville.

Besides shipping their products through a mail-order business, the Scheps also sell their cheese in stores in Thunder Bay and at the local Farmer's Market.

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Gouda and Swiss cheeses are the only two types of cheese they make, because the processes are similar. But there are different aged and flavoured cheeses for order, according to their Web site.

Along with the actual cheese-making and storage facilities, the family runs a retail business that sells cheese and a variety of Dutch imports.

Ten years into it, they have reached the point where they have outgrown their retail space. Margaret says her two sons, Walter and Martin, who will be taking over the business, will have to decide how and to what capacity the business will expand.

"We are in the middle of shuffling things around over the next couple of years," Margaret says.

The atmosphere they foster is one of family and friends in a rural setting where people are familiar with each other. Margaret says having a friendly face behind the counter customers feel they know and can trust has proven to be a pillar of their success.

Being the only Gouda cheese operation in Ontario also gives them a niche market, but it is labour-intensive work and the plant is costly to run. Because they are processors, they must pay for their milk before they use it in their cheese.

"It has to go on paper through the Dairy Farmers of Ontario first," she says. "So they measure our tank, we decide what we need for the cheese, and we pay them for that milk."

Besides the regulatory processes, their only other obstacle has been the media with its promotion of low-fat foods and diet supplements. There are requests for low-fat cheese, but Margaret says it has no taste. She emphasizes that everything in moderation is healthy if you use common sense.

Since their cheese is completely natural right down to the milk they produce on the farm, they hope to continue to produce a quality product that people trust.

www.cheesefarm.ca

By ADELLE LARMOUR

For Northern Ontario Business