This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Dominick DiBartolomeo, owner of the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills. It has been edited for length and clarity.
When I bought the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills, my goal was to honor its legacy while making it feel fresh and relevant.
The shop has been around since 1967 and already had decades of goodwill, but I wanted to create something familiar and new, so we added sandwiches, salads, cheese boards, and wines by the glass.
I didn’t expect the flood of teenagers.
My daughter is 16, and I like to say her generation arrived armed with Instagram. They started filming everything — and some of those videos went viral.
Suddenly, we had crowds of teens lining up for a place that had historically catered to adults, chefs, and longtime Beverly Hills locals. It completely changed the energy of the shop.
This year has been one of our toughest
People know our products are premium, but they don’t see how volatile the economics have become.
We import directly from Europe, mainly Italy. At the beginning of the year, tariffs were 10%, and we absorbed as much of that as we could. However, the Euro then jumped from around $1.04 to about $1.17 or $1.18 — a 13% swing. As a result, the same products suddenly cost 23% more before they even reach our shores.
Then there are the Chinese tariffs, which people rarely think about, but almost all takeout packaging comes from China. Between packaging tariffs and ingredient tariffs, some costs have risen 50%, 60%, and even 70%. When that happens across your entire supply chain, the math stops making sense.
We tried everything before raising prices, from asking suppliers to share some of the tariff load to switching products, and eventually accepting lower margins. However, at a certain point, you can’t absorb the costs.
Our sales are up this year, but our margins are down because our costs are so much higher. That’s the reality for a lot of small specialty food businesses right now.
Our customers are still buying, but the middle is getting squeezed. The under-$25 customer remains rock solid, and diners spending $100 or more are also doing fine. It’s the middle that’s struggling, and that’s where a lot of restaurants and gifting budgets live.
The next generation is extending the life cycle of my business
When we moved into our new location a couple of years back, I knew I had to take care of the older clientele who built this brand — but I also believed that if the shop didn’t evolve, it would die.
Adding sandwiches and salads wasn’t just about giving people something to eat while they browsed. It was a way to create a full experience. While customers wait for their sandwiches, they can try different cheeses in line. The whole place feels alive.
Then the influencers started showing up.
I didn’t know who most of them were — I had to ask my daughter who people were after they left — but our Instagram following grew from 6,000 to around 280,000 in about a year and a half.
People now walk in and say, “I came here because you showed up on my feed.” We even had a couple from Australia tell us this was their first stop off the plane for their honeymoon because we popped up on their TikTok feed.
The most exciting part is that the virality around the sandwiches has turned into virality around the cheese, too. Because of the way our line bends through the store, people waiting for sandwiches are sampling cheeses the whole time — and they film that. Now, young customers come in for a buzzy sandwich, discover a type of cheese they’ve never tried, and suddenly they’re coming back for parties, holidays, or simply because they want something special.
We even launched a merch line because we noticed how many younger customers wanted something to take home. Seeing a longtime customer who’s been coming in for 40 or 50 years standing next to a teenager in a Cheese Store hoodie is one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced. It feels like we’ve made cheese buying cool again.
What’s happened is that this new generation has completely renewed the life cycle of the business. At the same time, our longtime loyal customers remain the backbone of who we are. Now the two groups stand shoulder to shoulder in the shop. It’s a full-circle moment — we’ve managed to grow without losing our core.
I met my wife at the Cheese Store, where I was working while I couldn’t afford a phone and was taking the bus to work. She supported me through everything — from raising money to buying the business and surviving the pandemic. Now we have 40 to 50 employees. All of their families rely on us.
That responsibility changes you. So does the joy of seeing the store full, watching our products show up in incredible restaurants, and witnessing teens discover a 57-year-old Beverly Hills cheese shop on social media.
Read the original article on Business Insider
The post Teens discovered my 57-year-old cheese shop on TikTok — and transformed my business appeared first on Business Insider.
