Meyer Cheese – a Family Affair

When Miel Meyer left home, he swore he would never return to work in the family cheese factory. Six years later, the young microbiology and genetics graduate was not only back in the factory, he was running the place. He still is. The Meyer Cheese general manager laughs at the inevitability of it.

“I knew cheese inside and out,” Miel says of his decision to take the reins from parents Ben and Fieke after they retired in 2007. “I’ve lived outside the cheese factory, I’ve seen it, breathed it my whole life.”
He and wife Hayley, who keeps the company accounts, are raising their three sons near the family-owned dairy farm that supplies the factory with its essential primary ingredient.

National champions

The senior Meyers also live on the property and still lend a hand as needed. Miel was nine months old when his parents emigrated from Holland with their three pre-school children, in 1984. Making the gouda they had mastered in Europe was initially difficult until a fellow Dutchman taught them how to work with milk from grass fed New Zealand cows. The couple eventually bought their own farm and dairy herd west of Hamilton, with milk piped directly from the cowshed to vats inside their adjacent factory. The resulting products are among the most awarded cheeses in New Zealand and both the immigrants’ sons have continued the family tradition. In 2011, Miel became the youngest person to win the national cheesemaker of the year contest. His older brother Geert has also worked as a Meyer cheesemaker.

Keeping the quality

During his tenure as general manager, Miel has helped launched the company’s range into supermarkets and specialty food stores throughout New Zealand. The Meyers also supply the Hamilton cheese shop that Ben and Fieke launched, which is now operated by family friends.

These days, the Meyer range includes aged and vintage gouda, a smoked gouda, one made with cumin and cloves and one flavoured with Italian herbs. They buy milk goat milk from a family in Morrinsville and sheep milk from Cambridge to make their goat and sheep goudas. “There is nothing magically new in the cheese line. You’ve got companies that talk of being innovative, they say if you don’t innovate the business dies. I have the exact opposite approach. My only dream is to keep the quality and the product exactly the same as my parents did. Or better, if that’s possible.

“I’m super proud of my parents. I watched them struggle, especially early on, when they didn’t know anyone. Seeing how hard they worked, with huge debts on their back, they had huge challenges to overcome. When they first came here, they lived in a tent for several months.” Ben Meyer still makes a daily pilgrimage to the factory and his son makes a point of leaving his desk each day to visit the couple who created it all.
“My single favourite thing to do is to have lunch with Mum and Dad every day. Not a lot of people get to do that.” And what’s on the lunch table? Well, cheese of course. And cheese with crackers for morning tea.

A humbling realisation

“My favourite food is a grilled cheese sandwich. I’m still not sick of it. One thing my family is passionate about is eating New Zealand cheese.” Though he does also like to meet customers. Miel recounts the time he visited Wellington to hand out samples to customers in a large specialty food store. “It was a beautiful thing. I was doing tastings at the front door when I met three generations, an elderly woman and her daughter and granddaughter. They had grown up with our cheese on their table every day. It was the first time in my life I realised my parents’ cheese had actually made an impact in terms of the food of that family. I was humbled that day. Now I realise there are multiple families in our decades-long history, who’ve had our cheese.”