Vicente, a scientist from Lanzarote with a doctorate who is doing his doctoral thesis in Valladolid, goes out dancing one night and meets a local agricultural engineer, Ana. Some years later, when he is working in a hospital in London and she is in a winery in Valladolid, they decide to put aside their obligations and embark together on a common project. This might seem like the plot of a movie, but in reality, it is the starting point of Queso Project.
With Lanzarote as the seed and setting, Vicente Martín and Ana García decided to create this initiative in 2016, which was born with the aim of dignifying the sale of cheese: "In the Canary Islands we are used to ordering a quarter of fresh cheese or half a kilo of yellow cheese in the supermarket, but we don't stop to think about who makes it, where it comes from or what characteristics it has," Vicente explains to La Voz.
After traveling the world "and discovering markets and cheese factories, I realized how different things were outside compared to those I had been involved in during my upbringing," recalls the professional. Therefore, with these ideas in his head and thanks to the "Proyecto Emprende" - a support plan from the Cabildo de Lanzarote for entrepreneurial business ideas - he and his partner were able to become a driver of change for this reality, bringing together two of the passions they both share: cheese and travel.
Cheese as an experience
After opening a first store in Arrecife, Vicente and Ana began a journey based on telling stories, turning the sale of this product into an experience.
"In our stores there are photographs and, when customers come, we can tell them the story of Juan and Juana, two cheese makers from Gran Canaria who are 86 years old and make cheeses thanks to their three cows and eight goats; of their neighbors Eli and Juan, who, in their case, own eight cows; or of Felisa, who managed to set up a small cheese factory in Órzola," explains Vicente.
Broadly speaking, both owners dedicate themselves to touring cheese factories in the Canary Islands to make their productions visible and to make them known outside their island: "We have been to 99% of the small firms we work with, getting to know in depth what they do, because the main objective is to transmit it later to those who come to buy."
In that sense, they comment that they try to select the cheese factories "based on their emotional value but also for what they sell, since, after all, we act as a filter: when people come to Queso Project they take with them a story, if they want to listen to it, but above all, a product of the highest quality."
Ethical principles
But before reaching the buyer's hands, the cheeses experience a commercial relationship based on three ethical principles. The first of these establishes that it is the producer who chooses the price; the second, that in times of low production, producers are not obliged to continue selling, but should prioritize their local buyers; and the third, the transmission of the story, so that the customer always has the ease of knowing more about the product, either through social networks or in the store.
Vicente recalls the first cheese factory they approached, where after understanding the project, the first question the cheese makers asked was how much they were going to pay for their cheeses. "Ana and I were amazed and replied that we could not be the ones to set the price but them. After proposing an amount, we ended up paying them double, since the cost they had set was very low."
This problem arises because "in the local sector it is not usual for the person who plants or milks to be the one who chooses what they are going to get for their work."
Canary Islands, a difficult area for small producers
And beyond this, in the opinion of the creators of the initiative, this "ignorance" about cheeses extends to the entire Canarian society.
"In the Canary Islands we boast that we are the community that consumes the most cheese in Spain, but we forget to say that we are also the one that imports the most," says Vicente, who argues that "we have raised up to three generations with powdered milk, milk preparation and yellow cheese, getting them used to paying very little for these products."
This explains why in the islands, "where the culture of the mixed sandwich is already part of our idiosyncrasy", small producers suffer a lot: "It is difficult to detach the consumer from imported products when these cost three or four times less than those from local artisan cheese factories, even though the latter have much better quality."
From Lanzarote to Tenerife
To try to contribute to alleviating this situation to the greatest extent that its possibilities allow, Queso Project, during the pandemic, experienced a turning point.
"At that time, in addition to the store in Arrecife, we had a cheese bar in Teguise that we had to close, taking a step back to later take a bigger one forward: opening a second store in Santa Cruz de Tenerife," says Vicente. And after this new store, created in 2020, came a second in the municipality of La Laguna - also on the same island - in 2021.
Faced with the question of why Tenerife, both owners were clear about the answer from the first moment, since many large restaurants and individuals from this island were interested in the project, a fact that made them realize that "they were doing something right."
"We have managed to open the eyes and palates of many people"
Now, between these three stores, they sell Swiss, Dutch, German, Austrian, Italian, French, some American and many other Canarian cheeses.
Although they recognize that running this type of business "is complicated because our products are more expensive than those usually found in supermarket displays", and maintaining three stores "costs a lot when there are no large investment groups involved, but just the two of us and some shop assistants", they try to focus on the good part.
"We have had a very good acceptance in these years, and the fact that it is hard is not comparable with the satisfaction of someone coming to one of the stores and saying to us: "Put whatever you want on me". Knowing that we have managed to get at least one person to trust us blindly is the most rewarding thing."
That and also the fact of giving the possibility to many people who, when they find us, also return to access those cheeses that they ate as children and many other unknown ones: "In these years, we have managed, even on a small scale, to open the eyes and palates of many people who were not used to valuing cheese", conclude Vicente and Ana.
