CHEESY GOODNESS: Jessica Sennett showed off the Cheese Grotto she
will further develop in the dairy-accelerator program.
Agropur / Jessica Sennett
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BY JULIANNE MCSHANE
She’s the big cheese!
Bigwigs at a foreign dairy
cooperative awarded a Sunset
Park entrepreneur $15,000 in
cash and four months’ worth
of mentorship to help her
bring what she called her oneof
a-kind, cheese-storage invention
to the masses.
“My product is very unique
in the international market —
nobody else is really making
anything like this,” said Jessica
Sennet.
Sennett won the prizes
from leaders of Canadian
dairy cooperative Agropur,
who recognized her Cheese
Grotto as one of fi ve start-up
businesses that the group’s
mentors — who include industry
experts and businessdevelopment
coaches — will
work to grow during monthly,
week-long workshops in Montreal
from September through
December 2019.
The Cheese Grotto, a structure
made of birch, clay brick,
and bamboo, comes in three
different sizes — costing $125,
$250, and $350 — that can hold
between two and eight pounds
of cheese.
The vessels — which can
fi t on counter tops and in refrigerators,
and are manufactured
upstate — extend
cheeses’ shelf lives three-tofour
times longer than normal,
thanks to the airfl ow
and humidity from the grotto’s
natural materials, Sennett
said.
“It’s like a wine cellar, but
for cheese,” she said.
The Brooklynite, who lives
on 54th Street between Fourth
and Fifth avenues, dreamt up
the contraption after spending
more than a decade working
in the dairy industry and
at specialty-cheese shops, adding
that she often saw customers
at a loss for how to preserve
their expensive fromage.
“I saw that people didn’t
really have a proper way
to store their cheese,” she
said. “Half the time people
are throwing away a third
of the product because they
don’t know how to properly
handle it.”
Sennett hopes to forge
marketing partnerships with
other food and cheese-related
companies through the cooperative’s
so-called “dairy accelerator
program,” as well
as expand awareness for her
product within Kings County
and beyond, she said.
“There is an opportunity
to work with local specialty
stores within Brooklyn, as
well as wine bars and restaurants,”
she said. “My product
can impact the specialty
cheese industry at large.”
And the business owner
praised the program for providing
critical funding and
guidance for small operations,
noting how such support
can be few and far between
in the industry.
“It’s the kind of program
that I think is lacking within
the dairy industry at large —
a lot of people are stuck within
the realms of agriculture and
even specialty food,” she said.
CHEESE WHIZ
Sunset Parker awarded international prize
for her unique cheese-storage contraption