After 'Top Chef' episode aired, orders for a prized Wisconsin cheese were up 3,792% (2024)

In the three weeks since Wisconsin cheesemaker Andy Hatch appeared on the April 3 episode of “Top Chef,” his website sales have been up 3,792%.

That translates into 1,100 pounds of cheese sold to about 700 new customers, he said.

The third episode of “Top Chef: Wisconsin,” dubbed “Take It Cheesy,” which aired on Bravo, had the “cheftestants” take part in a first-time cheese festival.

Hatch, co-owner and head cheesemaker at Uplands Cheese, near Dodgeville, introduced his flagship cheese, Pleasant Ridge Reserve, to which host Kristen Kish said: “That cheese, I hear, happens to be the most awarded cheese in American history.”

“That’s what they say,” Hatch said.

“Cheftestant” Michelle Wallace of St. Louis won the elimination challenge on that episode for a coconut curry collard green saag with a potato fritter made with Pleasant Ridge Reserve.

Pleasant Ridge Reserve, in the style of Gruyère, a hard Swiss cheese, sells for $30 a pound. It’s made with milk from 170 cows on Hatch’s 300-acre farm along Highway 23, just north of Governor Dodge State Park. Hatch has owned the business since 2014 with his wife, Caitlin Hatch, and Scott and Liana Mericka.

Uplands makes about 120,000 pounds of Pleasant Ridge per year, so Hatch said they’re not at risk of running out anytime soon.

“But if this trend continues, we will run out,” he said, adding that they only sell cheese made the previous year, after it’s aged. So once the 2023 cheeses are gone, that’s it until the 2024 batches ripen next year.

Solid showings

Pleasant Ridge Reserve was named third-best in show out of thousands of cheeses last year at the American Cheese Society’s annual competition. It also won the cheese contest at the State Fair last year — but Hatch said that doesn’t change the fact that he couldn’t buy this kind of publicity.

He said he was probably chosen for the show because his cheeses are so decorated. “It definitely wasn’t my charm and good looks.”

Hatch said that kind of publicity for his small business is unprecedented.

“We don’t have marketing budgets for us to go find new customers. We don’t really have the leverage or the ability to go do that,” he said. “This kind of exposure for a little producer like us is amazing.”

He said Uplands is small by any measure, making 120,000 pounds of cheese a year in a state that produces 3.5 billion pounds per year. The medium-size factories make 120,000 pounds a day, he said.

Hatch said that, right away, Uplands Cheese saw 621 new people sign up for its email list and got about 1,000 new followers on Instagram.

Then, last week, he was awarded the elite title “master cheesemaker,” considered a doctorate in cheese. Wisconsin is the only state in the country with this level of certification.

To be considered a master, a cheesemaker has to have been making a style of cheese for 10 years. And then, once people apply for it, they go through another three years of classes and take a test with 85 essay questions that takes about 40 hours.

John Jaeggi, coordinator of the cheese industry and applications program at the Center for Dairy Research, said it’s a comprehensive exam covering all aspects of cheesemaking from milk quality through manufacture. It involves troubleshooting questions, regulatory questions, being able to do math calculations regarding cheese yields and milk standardization.

Impressive production

Hatch called the filming of “Top Chef” last summer “a trip.”

He said the production was huge, sophisticated and impressive. Before heading out to the photogenic Cupola Barn, a rustic event venue in Oconomowoc where they held the cheese festival, they first filmed the quickfire challenge in what Hatch described as an enormous warehouse near Milwaukee with about 100 production assistants running around.

A story in the Milwaukee Business Journal said a former printing plant in Oak Creek was transformed into a cooking area to film some elimination challenges and judge’s table sequences. A spokeswoman for the show said the space was about 70,000 square feet and confirmed there was a crew of about 100 people.

“It was bustling,” Hatch said. “But everybody was friendly and positive and welcoming.”

Hatch said he gives the crew, producers and judges a lot of credit for being easy to work with. “I can’t say what it’s like for the chefs. It’s pretty intense, I think. But for me, it was pretty easy.”

‘Such a big deal’

He said having “Top Chef” spend its 21st season in Wisconsin “is such a big deal for our state and for our cheese industry, especially for small producers like us.”

“Top Chef” could sell access to the highest bidder, Hatch said. “You’d end up with big, big companies on there who could afford it. But I really appreciate that they took the time, did their homework and picked interesting small cheesemakers and put us in a big national spotlight.”

Hatch said his website software revealed the 3,792% increase in orders. “It’s typically fairly quiet on our website this time of year.”

The night the episode aired, Uplands was getting one order per minute, or more than 600 orders, he said.

As important or more important than getting a first order is all the new people who signed up for Upland’s email list.

“That people are interested enough to stay engaged with us,” Hatch said. “There are big companies with budgets to go acquire email lists or customers. We can’t do that. And so to have that many people commit to staying in touch with us is amazing.”