Vegan aged blue cheese, just one of over 20 original flavors that Rebel Cheese will be able to store/age in their new cheese cave.
Like many “mom and pop” restaurants in Austin, Rebel Cheese Vegan Deli & Wine Shop has been affected by COVID, and husband and wife team Kirsten Maitland and Fred Zwar have had to get creative on more than one occasion. Because their storefront isn’t able to store a large amount of product, they had been leasing 600 square feet of a 1,200 square foot shared commercial kitchen space in north Austin, which came with its shares of challenges in terms of production time and storage.
When COVID hit and restaurants began scaling back, they immediately began looking at ways to cut costs as well as increase sales, and they discovered a space in east Austin that would triple their storage capacity and save them $600/month.
The only catch was that to stay under budget, they’d have to finish it out themselves by using mostly recycled equipment and a whole lot of elbow grease. But with a lot of exhaustion and a lot less fanfare, their production kitchen is ready for moving day!
Their new facility will house a 1,000 square foot walk-in refrigerator that will act as a cheese cave for an estimated 5,000 pounds of cheese, thus enabling them to meet production demands for domestic shipping in the future (stay tuned for release dates!)
Look out for more news on local and domestic shipping and exclusive cheese of the month clubs as well. Fred and Kirsten hope to have an e-commerce solution enabled by the holidays, but for now, join them at a virtual cheese tasting on Wednesday, September 30th, from 7-8 pm to get all the juicy details.
