Dubbed the "grate cheese caper," this heist is no laughing matter for the close-knit community of artisanal British cheese makers. They're still reeling from the mysterious disappearance of a whopping 22 metric tons of rare Cheddar, valued at a minimum of 300,000 pounds, or roughly $390,000. This daring scam appears to be the biggest blow to hit their industry in decades.
"We never dreamed such a thing could unfold," exclaimed Patrick Holden, whose dairy farm in Wales contributed some of the missing Cheddar. "Of course, people incur debts," he continued. "But theft? That's unheard of."
The saga began in July. Neal's Yard Dairy, a prominent London cheese retailer, revealed that it had received a substantial order from a seemingly "legitimate wholesale distributor for a major French retailer." The company subsequently reached out to Holden's dairy farm and two other cheese producers—Westcombe Dairy and Trethowan Brothers—to fulfill the order, which was too large for any one of them to handle alone.
Holden admitted he was initially flattered. A French chain wanting to purchase such a significant quantity of British Cheddar? And Cheddar, a quintessential British delicacy? "We were walking around, proudly announcing, 'Guess what? A French supermarket is buying our cheese!'" Holden chuckled. "We never thought it would happen. Well, apparently, it didn't."
Neal's Yard dispatched the cheese in two shipments in September, with payment due on October 7, according to David Lockwood, a company partner. A week later, when the money hadn't arrived, Neal's Yard attempted to follow up on the payment but received no response.
"Basically, our contacts vanished," said Lockwood, who declined to share the correspondence with The New York Times. The company reported the incident to the London police on October 21, "when we were certain we'd been scammed," Lockwood added via text.
London's Metropolitan Police confirmed that it had received a report about "the theft of a vast quantity of cheese" from a company in Southwark, a borough in the southeast of the British capital where Neal's Yard maintains a warehouse.
The dairy industry has faced criminal activity before. In 2015, Italian police arrested a gang accused of stealing approximately $875,000 worth of Parmigiano-Reggiano. The following year, thieves in Wisconsin stole a trailer containing around $46,000 worth of cheese. More recently, thieves made off with $23,000 worth of cheese in the Netherlands.
While "such incidents occur more frequently in Italy," noted Patrick McGuigan, a British food writer who has authored two books on cheese, "in the U.K., they're incredibly rare."
That's not to say it's unprecedented. In a 1998 cheese heist in Britain, thieves reportedly stole six tons of award-winning Cheddar.
McGuigan noted that offloading the stolen cheese could be challenging. "It's akin to stealing a Van Gogh painting; it's tough to sell because everyone knows it's a Van Gogh," he explained.
The police are actively investigating the latest case, but no arrests have been made. In the meantime, the industry is urging vigilance. Jamie Oliver, a renowned British chef, warned cheese enthusiasts to be "wary of suspiciously large quantities of premium Cheddar on the black market."
"Remember, if the deal seems too gouda to be true, it probably is," he posted on Instagram. "Let's track down these cheese thieves."
The cheese producers were mourning the loss on multiple fronts. "I felt like I knew each wheel individually," said Todd Trethowan, referring to the missing Cheddar his farm had provided. "To think it had vanished, and all that wasted effort, was devastating."
Lockwood stated that Neal's Yard had honored its payments to the three cheese makers. There were also additional costs for the lost labor, packaging, and shipping. He believed his company wouldn't recover much from insurance. "Remember, we loaded it onto the truck," he said. "We were duped."
Despite this, Lockwood expressed that the company was also endeavoring to learn from this experience and find a silver lining. "This will be an exceptional action-comedy," he remarked. "Perhaps we can sell the rights and recoup some of our losses."
