Cheese is in the family’s blood

Founded in 1961, Renard’s Cheese in Door County’s Sturgeon Bay, Wis., has a long and rich history – well on its way to becoming a fourth-generation cheesemaker.

But let’s start at the very beginning.

At the age of 13, Howard Renard began helping his father, a farmer and milk hauler. For 20 years, Howard learned the art and science of the cheesemaking trade at Door County Dairies producing Colby and his specialty, Cheddar, before opening his own manufacturing plant — Rosewood Dairy — in Algoma, Wis., in 1961.

In a nutshell, “we started off making cheese at the Algoma location. In 1966 my dad purchased this location which originally was just a cheese factory and it ran until 1975. That same year, they combined both factories into one,” Chris recalls. “In 1975, my parents, Gary and Bonnie, remodeled this cheese factory into a cheese store. My grandfather told them starting out that that was the craziest idea ever, and that it would never work. But, in 1976 my grandparents built a cheese store right next to the cheese factory because the store was taking off and doing well.”

In turn, Gary, Chris’ dad, inherited his love of cheesemaking from his dad, so it’s logical that the love for being “all-in” on cheesemaking was inevitable for Gary’s son Chris who jokes that an empty cheese vat likely served as his first play pen.

“I was about 4 years old when I started coming down to the factory,” Chris recalls. “My first job was washing milk cans. I was the person in charge of running them through the washer, so they could get back on the truck to go back to the farms. When I got out of high school, at that point I was not making cheese anymore, I went off to college for four years, and I worked for SuperValu for a total of seven years.

“Then dad called up and said he was looking to retire and cut back, and I made a decision within three months that we really liked Door County and this was the place to come back to start our family. I’ve been here since 1995.”

Schooled in cheesemaking from the time he could tie his shoes, Chris notes that the seeds have been planted for a possible fourth-generation in the couple’s four daughters: Samantha, 25, a former pediatric nurse who came back to the family business in 2021; Gabrielle, 20; Taylor, 18; and Carrie, 15.

Chris credits his parents and grandparents for teaching him the value of hard work and doing something that you love — and passing those skills to his own daughters.

”My grandparents started it all and they raised their entire family of seven children as cheesemakers. My mom and dad did the same thing, whether we liked it or not. We were hand waxing little itty bitty pieces of cheese before we went to school,” Chris recalls. “Our kids grew up doing that. It sounds crazy, but at the age of 7, a child can cut string cheese, and they get something out of doing that, they have a purpose, it connects you and it gives you a strong work ethic.” DF