Successful Innovative Companies: Volume 21

The Successful Innovative Company of the week is: Carbery!

What they do right: they make cheese! That's a good start but I've toured probably half a dozen cheese factories and let me tell you, innovative is not a word used to describe the cheese industry. Not even American cheese. (It hurts me a little inside to call it cheese. Calling it American semi-solid processed oil would be more appropriate.) In the world of cheese the recipes have been around for centuries and changes are few and far between. In the last hundred years most of the actual change has been creating production equipment to mass produce cheese. So when Carbery created a new cheese in 1996 that is simply amazing, they get a nod for being innovative.

Carbery is a company headquartered in Cork, Ireland. They were established in 1965 as a dairy food company. Today they produce everything from alcohol to flavorings.

If you have never had Dubliner cheese, you are missing out. Introduced in 1996 it is tasty. It is similar to cheddar but it is a little bit more sweet and a tiny bit sour. It is aged 1-2 years and has a nice sharp cheese aged taste. There are also little calcium crystals that give it a slightly rough texture. It is my favorite cheese.

What they could improve: I would like to see greater distribution of their other cheese flavors in the US. Dubliner is somewhat easy to find however they have several varieties of Dubliner and other cheeses like Red Leicester that I have not tried.

Other than that I think that offering only the 7 ounce and 5 pound sizes of Dubliner must save money on packaging and production. They also do very little advertising in the US so word spreads by word of mouth. I can only imagine how a little advertising would go a long way for Carbery and Dubliner cheese.