As far as Francisco Arbelo's memories go, his family always had goats and produced cheese. In fact, it was his grandmother Isabel's recipes that his father Manuel continued to use when he opened the company Quesería Filo El Cuchillo, in Tinajo.
When the company's founder passed away in 2016, brothers Miguel and Francisco Arbelo, along with their mother Beni Toribio, "the boss," decided to continue the family tradition.
"When my father died, I left my job as an administrator and, together with my brother and mother, we decided to move forward and continue the tradition," shares Francisco Arbelo.
The cheese factory's differential value is that it makes its cheeses with raw goat's milk, thanks to which it preserves aromatic nuances, natural ferments, and the organoleptic personality of the pasture and the volcanic climate of Tinajo.
"The advantage of using unpasteurized milk is that it contains the artisanal flavor," explains Francisco, who also shares that, to ensure there are no problems, they clean and disinfect each animal daily, test the milk to certify it is in optimal condition, and transform it into cheese quickly.
"We do everything in the same day, milking is at 4:00 AM, it curdles, and by 11:00 AM the cheese is already in the refrigerator." Quesería Filo El Cuchillo has fresh cheese made daily; semi-cured raw milk cheese, with versions that include paprika and gofio; and a cured cheese of up to six months.
The fresh cheese, of which they make one hundred kilos a day, is the one they sell the most by far, although it is not sent to competitions because it only lasts about 7 days.
It is the semi-cured raw milk cheese that has won almost all the island awards. It has been the best goat cheese in the Canary Islands at the Tabefe Awards of FEAGA, a Grand Gold Medal three years in a row at Agrocanarias, and the best island cheese of Lanzarote in 2026 in its category, an award that its longer-aged version also obtained.
When asked about the secret to so much success, Arbelo highlights that the family's goats "go out to the mountains every day and feed on high-end pastures."
All of Filo El Cuchillo's cheese is sold in Lanzarote. "You can buy it at the cheese factory's little shop between 6:00 AM and 12:00 PM, at local and specialized shops, and at some supermarkets like Chacón."
The Tinajo cheese factory, which in addition to the family, employs four other workers, would like to grow in the future. "The ideal would be to have enough production to send to the other Canary Islands," shares Francisco Arbelo.
Asked if there is business for young people from Lanzarote to set up more cheese factories on the island, the tinajero entrepreneur believes so, but warns that it is sacrificing”.
“We start at 4:00 AM and by 12:30 PM the farm work is more or less finished, but then there is the administrative work to do, and there is more and more of it,” shares Francisco Arbelo.