The Cheese Lady renovates an old northeast side store to offer world cheeses, wines, Michigan beers

When Heather Zinn was in her favorite specialty food shop, The Cheese Lady store in Muskegon, she overheard a customer say he’d just been in the Kalamazoo store. What? Did that mean there were franchises available? The answer was a resounding maybe.

But Zinn didn’t give up. She kept the conversation alive over the next months, and, in October 2012, she opened the company’s second franchise location at 315 Fuller Ave. NE, Grand Rapids.

“I was going to change careers and I couldn’t imagine working for someone else again,” Zinn says of her career as a radio station sales rep. “I had my eyes and ears open for what I would do next and this all happened at the right time. It happened organically.”

The Cheese Lady offers cheeses from around the U.S. as well as France, Spain, England, and Australia. The store carries the wines, beers, foods, and crackers that go with them. The store also carries a variety of serving options for the cheeses and their accompaniments, including handmade pottery by local potter Rita Shields.

Zinn, her partner Craig Stucky, and landlord Four Jays Properties completed renovating the building, which was most recently a dog grooming business. They refinished the original wood floors, put in new HVAC, sheetrock, and paint. They also opened the store’s interior to the daylight with skylights and a wall of storefront windows.

“She has a good crew,” says Kathleen Riegler, The Cheese Lady founder and owner of the Muskegon store. “She’s responsible for her own store, her own buying, and our franchise model provides supervision and startup, along with a lot of information and training.”

Hours: Tues. – Fri. 10 a.m to 6 p.m.; Sat. 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Source: Heather Zinn, Kathleen Riegler, The Cheese Lady
Writer: Deborah Johnson Wood, Development News Editor