Meet Jenn Mason: A Lifelong Storyteller Inspired by Cheese

Jenn Mason is the founder and “Big Cheese” at Curds&Co, with two shops in Boston, and Curdbox.com, a monthly subscription box of cheese, pairings, and more. But the path that led her to cheese drew on more than a few creative passions.

Mason has a rich background in art, publishing, teaching, and market research. She wrote The Art of the Family Tree, which includes mixed-media techniques for creating family trees that will become family heirlooms. Other books inspire readers to make creative cards and jewelry out of paper. She was the publisher of Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine, taught craft-making techniques all over the country, and even had her own streaming television show. Then she went on to work in market research with companies like Google, Bose, and Under Armour, illuminating what it is that customers want. For Under Armour, for example, she took insights and turned them into physical manifestations in three two-walled bedrooms constructed at Under Armour Headquarters so that the marketing team could walk through these rooms and really understand what their 3 different customer personas wanted.

How did you go from publishing and research to cheese?

Jenn Mason (JM): I was looking to start a new business and kind of fell into cheese. I had a cheese tasting party for my birthday in June 2016, where all my friends presented different cheeses to me. It turned out to be one of the best parties of my life. It got me thinking. I just created a party of storytelling. I thought, could this be the thing? I did a bunch of research. Immediately, I went to Thrift Books.com and bought 17 old, out-of-print cheese books. I read them and realized I wasn’t bored. But I needed to get educated. So in October 2016, I went to the Cheese School of San Francisco and took a 4-day boot camp class for people who want to work in cheese. I basically introduced myself as, “Hi I’m Jenn Mason and I want to own a cheese store, please talk me out of it.” And they didn’t. So we built the business model, got funding, found the space in May 2017, and opened in August 2017. I don’t go slow. I’m all in. Now, in retrospect, I figured out that the defining connector to my life is storytelling.

How did you develop such a sophisticated palate for cheese?

JM: We like to travel and were lucky enough to have traveled abroad a bit. Wherever we go, and even in the US, before we go anywhere, we always book a culinary tour, or a food tour, in places like Russia, Finland, Italy, the UK, both Portlands, Seattle, and Toronto. And the cheese shop is always my favorite stop, anywhere we go, visiting the actual cheese counters and trying new stuff.

You’d never worked in a cheese store, and then you became the owner of one?

JM: Right! I was never a monger until I was the owner. It was definitely a different way to do it. I knew I wanted to find an industry where my random, varied, and useful skills could be layered on an industry that could be doing more. I did a lot of research and found that the US is 39th in world cheese consumption. I was dumbfounded that we were that low. And remember that 50% of that is mozzarella. I don’t want to compete with traditional cheese shops. We call ourselves a 21st century cheese store. If there was never a cheese store before, how would we build a cheese store now?

What sets your store apart from other cheese shops?

JM: Our store is all about cheese and things that pair with cheese. We are always adding on to an order. I learned at the cheese school, when you are doing a pairing, ideally you are starting with two things you love and then you love them more when you eat them together. I had a great experience there: first there was a red wine that I didn’t care for, then I had the cheese and all of a sudden, needed a second glass of wine. It was amazing how that changed things.

What are some of the unique ways you approach cheese pairing?

JM: I love doing cheese pairings with people. On Tik Tok, I offered to give Cheese Makeovers. You tell me if you are sweet or salty, your favorite comfort food, favorite beverage, and your favorite cheese (so I don’t suggest that to you). It’s so much fun coming up with these cool pairings for people. It’s my weird superpower. I like cheese and things that pair with cheese. That’s everything we do, having people discover cheese, loving it and then going, ‘aha, I can make that better.’

During the pandemic, I did an event with my friend who is a therapist called Live Cheese Therapy - A Night to Eat Your Feelings. She was the “feelings monger” and I was the “cheese therapist.” She came up with three overwhelming feelings that her clients were feeling and I paired cheeses with them.

How has the pandemic affected your businesses?

JM: We have been lucky. We had enough staff who were college students and wanted to go back home, so we didn’t have to lose any staff. Pre-pandemic, we were one of the first businesses to sign up with Mercato. So we were ready. When the governor announced they were going to shut things down, our orders switched to 85% online overnight. We switched to curbside pickup only, reset the entire store, and brought up everything from the basement. April was our best month in the history of our store. But we also brought in yeast, flour (in big bags and repackaged it), and toilet paper. We joked with our customers about which cheeses pair well with toilet paper, eggs, and milk. Since people walk to our store, for a while, we were essentially people’s grocery store. We kept pivoting every week.

After we closed, we started Tele-mongering, a free one-on-one, 15-minute shopping experience via our phone hotline. Our Tele-monger will walk around the store while you are on the phone. She has learned how to talk about cheeses without having the customer taste them. It’s a different thing. We talk the language of the customer. We have 6 flavor profiles, such as smooth and melty, bright and fresh, stretchy and chewy, friendly and flexible. Then, we have charts and profile wheels to match wines, for example.

Curdbox fireside glow box.jpg — Curdbox fireside glow box

Curdbox your monthly subscription seems to fit perfectly with sheltering in place, did you launch it due to the pandemic?

JM: Curdbox was always part of the initial plan. Nobody is doing a cheese subscription box like we are. It’s cheese and pairings, and it tells a story. Every month, we put together a podcast, a Spotify playlist, and an information card. It’s not just a box of cheese, it’s an experience that gets delivered to your door. We’ve had people who have been subscribing for 32 months, pretty much from the beginning. We started Curdbox in July 2018 and had a bit of a surge when the pandemic hit. Curdbox definitely picked up between November and December, we doubled our subscription. We sent out 700 boxes in December. It’s growing exponentially now.

I feel like I make people’s lives better. If you subscribe for a year, you’ll try 72 new things and with your help, I will support 72 mostly small businesses. People always ask me ‘who are your competitors?’ I say if I am doing this right, then I have only friends, and no competitors. If I can get us to number 37 on that global cheese consumption list, then all the cheese stores are doing better.

I feel happy because the little makers of the pairings we put with these, could be makers that are only available in one state and now they’ll be known nationwide. For the March box, we’re supporting women owned business. The big insight we found and what we based the whole company on, is that people want to try these things and know the makers. My goal is to help people to “stop eating boring.”