Featured Trader: Sue Meades

Sue Meades, Cheese Aboard

Sue Meades and Colin

I am Sue Meades and, with my partner Colin, we are into our fifth year of running our Roving Canal Traders business Cheese Aboard.

We used to be crafters making wooden gifts, jewellery & personalised mugs. Colin became well know for the sustainable bamboo Hand Burnt Pyrography cheese/pizza boards we used to produce.

At the end of 2019, existing cheese traders on the network started to retire & some more experienced traders suggested that cheese would work beautifully with what we already had to offer, so the idea was born.

We launched the same time as Covid, which was unfortunate, but proved to us that cheese can be sold online as well as direct from the boat. We persevered, we learned about our product, we worked closely with our Cheshire supplier and found much to our delight that people loved it!

The Covid years were, in hindsight, good for us as we could learn and build the business at a slower pace, which has proved very beneficial. We feel that we have the perfect set up now: fabulous suppliers in The Great British Cheese Company and Welsh Lady Preserves for our pickles & chutneys.

We also have a little “Cheesessory” shop, with cheese related gifts for those fanatical about cheese – like cheesy socks, earrings, utensil sets, graters and, of course, although the mugs and crafting side of things had to go as we are far too busy selling cheese, we still have our ‘one off’ beautiful cheese boards available at Floating Markets and Festivals.

To celebrate starting our fifth year we are launching our Loyalty Card this season, and will have our very own cheese branded under our own label!

We are so looking forward to seeing all our regular customers and meeting new ones along the way this year as we travel the network as the only dedicated to cheese canal trader.

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