The simplicity of cheese with Chris Hallam of Chorlton Cheesemongers

Chorlton Cheesemongers in Greater Manchester sells cheese, first and foremost. But like all great cheese shops, it does more than that. “The most important thing that we do here, whether directly or indirectly, is encourage people to think more about food, about food production,” says Chris Hallam, founder.  

After a stint as a cheesemonger at Neal’s Yard Dairy, he worked with Graham Kirkham of Kirkham’s Lancashire and the team at Neal’s Yard Dairy to open his own shop. We spoke with Chris about starting a business in lockdown, authentic design, and vegan cheese.   

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. 

Chorlton Cheesemongers shopfront on a sunny day

Tell me how you came to the world of cheese. 

Well, obviously it's Neal’s Yard’s fault. 

I went down to do an MA [in theatre] in London in 2010. When I finished that MA in 2012, I needed some money and I saw that Neal’s Yard were doing Christmas hiring. 

And that's how I fell into cheese. 

 
What was that first Christmas like? 

Oh, it was great. It was busy. It was all consuming. 
It was fascinating learning so much about the cheese and about the producers and how Neal’s Yard work. 

They asked me to come back part-time in February, so I did that year, that Christmas, and then in 2016 we came back up to Manchester. 

Why did you start to think about opening your own business? 

When I came back up there, I carried on working in theatre all around the country. Obviously, because of the nature of theatre, the work wasn't happening all the time. 

Graham Kirkham was looking for people to help him out and also to help run his store on the Manchester Christmas Markets. So, I did that for three years and Graham was talking about the idea of opening up a shop. 

I was kind of interested by the idea, but I couldn't see how it would work because cheese shops didn't seem to work in Manchester. There was only one. There'd been one here for like, 40 years, and that was it. 

So, it was either a really genius idea or a really crap idea. I think I was veering more towards: it’s a crap idea. It just seemed risky. I didn’t know where it would be, how it would be, et cetera. 

Now, I don't know what happened. I think circumstances changed and we thought maybe it was the right time. Graham had been talking to Neal's Yard about the idea of a shop. In his usual way, he mentioned it as a fait accompli. 

And suddenly the message came back saying, “oh, well, Neal's Yard are interested. If you're interested in opening a shop, they're interested in going in on it.”  

It fitted in with the time when I was thinking I'd had enough of theatre. After 30 odd years of working in theatre, I was thinking it may be time to do something else. 

The stars were lining up, I think. 

 A team of cheesemongers smiles in front of the Chorlton Cheesemongers shopfront

What were those first days preparing for and then opening Chorlton like? 

Oh, they weren't days. It was probably a good two years from the point we said we were going to do it, to going ahead, to actually opening. 

We did things my usual way. I wasn't just going to go and do it blindly. I wanted to do a lot of research. 

I spent a lot of time in the library in Manchester looking through electoral forms and government statistics about Manchester demographics: where the money was and where the kind of customer that we would appeal to would be. Because Manchester is a big place and each area is quite distinctive. It was about finding the right fit for what was clearly going to be a heavily NYD-influenced shop. Once we highlighted a few areas, it was walking around those areas, having a look at them, coming back on busy days. 

After all of that, Chorlton was a bit of a no brainer. All along when I mentioned it, people just went, “oh, Chorlton.” You go, “I can’t just say Chorlton. It might not be the right place.” But inevitably, it was the right place, because of the people who are here and the kind of history that Chorlton has. 

There’s a shop next door to us, Out of the Blue fishmongers, which is the best fishmongers in the Northwest. We went in there and chatted to them about what they thought of Chorlton and whether something like a cheese shop would be a good fit. And Dave was just brilliant.  

He said, “well, why don't you come and do a few days in front of the shop and just test it out? Just come down, bring some cheese down and sell it, and see what people think.” I think we did that three times and it became obvious that it was the right place. 

Of course, we opened during lockdown. We got handed the keys 10 days before lockdown was called. So, we were doing the fit up in the early stages of lockdown, still not sure what dates we were going to be able to open on. 

We had this big dilemma about what we were going to do, whether or not we were going to go ahead and open, whether we could put it on hold until lockdown was finished. 

Thank God, after sitting down with figures, we realised that was that was not the thing to do. We just gambled and said we would open. We worked out that we had six months' worth of money to last us without opening. With what happened with lockdown, if we'd waited for that we would have been completely stuffed. 

So, we just did it, and it was brilliant, because people were desperate to go somewhere. And because we were a food shop, we were allowed to open. We were busy from day one. The first Saturday we opened was chaos, and that carried on to the first year. 

 
And what about now? Can you describe walking into the shop? 

It's a highly traditional looking shop. We don't have shutters. We have a very traditional pull-down awning. We've not tried to modernise it or fancify it at all. 

People call that an aesthetic. It's not a deliberate aesthetic. We had a budget to work towards and that's what we did. 

It's still the oldest looking shop on the street. Everything else has been modernised around it, but this still looks like its original 1930s frontage. We try to keep as much technology out of it as we can, so it's all straight wood and natural and open.  

As I say, it's not a deliberate design aesthetic. Cheese likes wood, so we try to use as much wood as possible. 

It's got a distinct cheese shop smell. 
I'd call it unaffected and genuine. “Authentic.” I think that's the word we use now. 

 
All the best designs are form following function. 

This case totally started out as function. Everything was functional. But actually, maybe [design] is the next step, because we're coming up to our fifth birthday in April [2025]. 

The last meeting I had at Neal's Yard, they said, “well, what do you want to do with the shop? You’ve got money there now. What would you like to do with the place?” 

Maybe that's the next thing. Maybe it is doing some kind of smartening up. We'll see. 

 
Is there anything that I haven't asked you yet that you think would be interesting for people to know? 

The most important thing that we do here, whether directly or indirectly, is encourage people to think more about food, about food production. 

I'm so used to it now after 11 years — understanding that the quality of your food depends on the quality of the land, the quality of care for your animals, the quality of care for the land — that I'm always surprised when customers come in and don't make that connection. What we do here, apart from sell cheese, is educate people on their food, where it's coming from, what it is. 

We have that on a bi-weekly basis, when someone comes in and asks for vegan cheese. It's not that we're anti-vegan at all, but vegan stuff is so processed that it's the antithesis of what we do here. That's why we don't have vegan cheese here. Food should be a simple, unprocessed, clean product, which is what the cheeses we sell are. 

We're about simplicity. Stop messing about with food and just enjoy the simplicity of it. 

You can find Chorlton Cheesemongers online at chorltoncheesemongers.co.uk.