Christophe, Cheesemonger

Christophe is one of the cheese mongers at our Auchan Kirchberg store.

Every day for the past 17 years, he has been cutting cheese for you to create the most beautiful and mouth-watering cheese platters!

• Christophe, tell us about your cheese monger job!

  My job is my everyday life. At 6 in the morning, I start cutting cheese in my workshop: people tend to forget about it, but we have whole cheeses delivered at the store. I cut somewhere around 60 different cheeses, wrap them and label them.

  Then, during the day, I’m there for my customers and I often cut other pieces if they have not found the one they are looking for.

• What is your trick to understand what each customer needs?

  Guessing my customers’ needs even before they know them is something I have learned to do with time and experience!

  Before each opening, I put myself in their shoes: I go to the stall, look at the cheeses and take away the ones that we cannot sell anymore, because the best-before date has expired or because they do not look good anymore.

  My trick is to think as a customer would: I remove all the products I would not buy. It takes some time because we have more than 350 different cheese sorts! But creaming off, if I may say so, is crucial to satisfy my customers and to get them to come back. When I do it, I keep that one customer in mind who comes to get his cheese selection twice a week with recipes he will cook with my cheese… I do not want to disappoint him, or any other customer!

• What are your customers’ main expectations?

  They all expect the highest quality, which seems normal! Besides that, we have two kinds of customers: the ones that know exactly what they want and come in a full list, and the ones that like to be guided and ask us to help them choose.

  In both cases, we have to advise them. We teach them, for example, to store their cheese – and to take them out at the right time, too, in order to let the tastes flourish!

• You are talking about tastes… Does it mean that you role goes beyond helping your customers choose a given cheese?

  Exactly! I have been a headwaiter in a restaurant for a very long time, I know how to serve cheese by heart. But what I love the most are pairings between cheese and other products, and those can often be unexpected!

  I like surprising my customers by going against common belief: no, cheese is not only meant to be eaten with red wine and yes, white wine can work perfectly with a lot of cheeses. And beer, too! Cheese and beer fit perfectly together!

  Our customers do not come just for advice, they come for discovery: we are lucky to have curious customers in Luxembourg.

• Sharing and passing on seem to be the most important in your job…

  Yes, explaining and teaching is our role as part of the Auchan teams. I remember that a few years ago, when customers could not find a cheese in store, they were unhappy about it… They now understand that cheese is a seasonal product: that they will not be able to get some Mont d’Or all year long and that goat cheese is harder to find when goats give birth.

  Passing our knowledge on is essential, but there is something even more important: respecting products and animals. That is the crucial fundamentals of my job.