About Us

Our Story

Hello, I’m Edward

Here is a photo of me getting excited about some cheese. This happens most days. Boy do I love cheese.

What is it that gets me so excited about cheese? 

First, it’s the taste. When you taste an amazing cheese for the first time, you just can’t help telling people about it. When you buy your favourite cheese, the anticipation of trying it is palpable, and then the joy of eating it is hard to beat.

Second, it’s the discovery. Cheese is one of the most wonderfully diverse, varied and quirky foods in the world. Discovering and trying new cheese is genuinely magical, particularly when you think that pretty much every single one started with the same four ingredients.

Third, it’s the feeling. The nostalgia. When you eat a piece of your favourite cheese, it brings back all the memories previously associated with that cheese. The people you were with, the places you were.

Hello, I’m Edward

For me, it’s the awe when I first saw a cheese trolley as an 11 year old in Reims. The Emmental I needed to get me through a bad break-up at uni. The pride on my granddad’s face when he served a cheeseboard…and you knew it was a special occasion. The giggle when I first tried Tunworth with truffle honey. The unbridled joy I get from sharing new cheeses with friends and loved ones and seeing their reactions.

Cheese is more than food. It’s a scrapbook of the most emotive memories throughout my life. It makes me feel connection, excitement, nostalgia and comfort. It is something I love exploring myself and sharing together.

Great cheese always signifies a special moment, when everything else has been put on pause, and we’ve taken a moment to cherish and experience the now. 

So, much of that makes me not the cheesegeek, just a cheesegeek. And I guess if you are reading this, you or a loved one could well be a cheesegeek too.

Want to know more about me? 

How much cheese do I eat?
Quite a lot! The most exciting thing about my job though is trying new cheese, and testing how cheeses vary through the year.

In my job, I am fortunate to judge at the World Cheese Awards, International Cheese & Dairy Awards, The British Cheese Awards and the Artisan Cheese Awards. This means I am always up to date with what’s out there, so I can share the best of the best with you as soon as I come across it.


Why did I start cheesegeek?
I didn’t come from a cheese or food background, I just love cheese. Tasting, exploring, sharing. But cheese can be pretty scary, overwhelming and intimidating to get into. I found that myself personally. I wanted to make discovering cheese easy, convenient and fun. I wanted every cheesegeek to be able to express themselves, whatever their cheese knowledge, cheese preferences or location (we aren’t all lucky enough to be near a good cheese shop!).

What is my favourite cheese memory?

There are so many, but my top three are probably:
- my first sight of a cheese trolley aged 11, and feeling like Charlie in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

- the look of surprise, and then delight when a French lady at a wedding I had catered tried Baron Bigod after I had tried to make the case it was as good as Brie de Meaux….her words afterwards were “that really is the best Brie I have ever tasted”. 

- every family get together during my childhood…because there would always be special cheese, and I always hoped my favourite would be the same as my granddads as he seemed to know the most about cheese!

What is my favourite cheese?

Cheese is so much more than food, it is emotive. As such my favourite cheese is always changing depending on my mood. There’s break-up cheese, first-date cheese, adventurous cheese. It’s one of the things I love about it so much. But some cheeses that are always up there are Tunworth, Cornish Kern, Baron Bigod and Washington. I do love Comte, Beaufort D’Alpage and Roquefort too! Oh dear, the list is getting quite long…

So that’s a bit about me…

But cheesegeek isn’t actually about me, it’s about all of cheesegeeks. It’s about sharing everything I know and love about cheese with you, so you can experience the joy cheese has given me all these years.So I hope you’ll join us on this crazy, amazing, exciting, emotional adventure that is cheese.


Grab your pink and white paper bag, and join the ride!

Want to know more about me? 

The Cheesy Timeline

2017

cheesegeek was set up and founder Edward Hancock decided to leave the Fund Management world for the far less corporate but far more exciting and stinky world of cheese. He’s beyond geeky about cheese, any clues as to why the bizz is called cheesegeek?...

2017

First ever order (what a milestone). Cheese is prepared and dispatched from Edward’s mum’s utility room. 10 on the Start-up Scale, 0 on the glam scale.

The Kern story. It wins Supreme Champ at World Cheese Awards, we buy 100kg of the stuff, it gets featured in national press...we become go to UK supplier (still from a utility room).

2017

First Christmas rush. Deliveries nudge over 100 in the week before Christmas. This business might just work...

2018

Official premises number 1: Riverside in Earlsfield. Edward’s mum glad to be rid of the industrial fridges and pong. Rich joins as Edward’s partner and COO (Cheesiest Operation Officer going). Edward & Rich have been friends since school so this could be fun. We decide rockstars work great as cheesebox names.

Employee 001, Annabel, joins. Leap of faith given we were still in infancy and Cheese HQ is a pretty lonely place. We make the switch to Shopify for our website, and Rich plasters yellow on yellow on yellow on the site (we might just be the yellow-est website going).

2018

Deliveries are being made on Fridays...and only Fridays. No rolling subscriptions in place, just Elvis, Lionel and a small ‘Secret Cheese Shop’ (now known as Pick n Mix and not so secret).

2018

CASSIE (Cheese Allocation System and we forget what the other letters stand for) Mk1 enters the fray. CASSIE manages all of our orders, logs our customer preferences, knows what is in season and holds our cheese universe. Cheese allocating will never be the same again and this paves the way for Annabel to become the CASSIE queen. 

2018

Busiest day this Christmas is almost 200. Mums are drafted in to help and write themselves into cheesegeek folklore (Mums, if you’re reading, here’s your written shout out). 

2019

We figure people may want cheese beyond just Fridays and extend delivery to every day of the week.

Rolling subscriptions are a go, excuse us whilst we kiss The Jimi

2019

Our best Christmas yet. Busiest day tops 300...little did we know what 2020 had in store

2020

Lockdown announced, overnight orders go through the roof. Artisan cheese is a lockdown essential. Edward learns the wonder of Zoom tastings. 

Team finally grows to more than 3 people...in fact by the end of 2020 we are 12 (plus a very merry band of temporary Xmas staff). Nicola and Bella are beavering away in dispatch getting all our cheesy orders out. 

2020

More team members. Amy joins in dispatch to round out the dispatch divas/milk queens. Jen starts in Operations. Jen is Annabel’s saviour, they hit it off right away and for some reason have a witching hour every day where no one quite knows what’s happening, least of all the gruesome twosome. Charlotte Duffy (CD to everyone at cheesegeek) also starts in Customer Happiness, ensuring our customers always have a cheery message at the end of the line (or email).

2020

We wave goodbye to Riverside and move into Rainbow - more than 3 times the size and finally we can start to meet demand. Jen’s commute lengthens from 5 mins to 20 mins much to her dismay.

Rhiannon joins in Marketing with a wealth of cheese puns and Rich begins to rue the day he ever hired her. 

2020

We were wrong. Christmas demand is off the charts, Tara joins to give CD a helping hand in Customer Service. 11,000 boxes sent out over the month. Houston, we’re going to need some more space.

2021

We test the water with raising investment. Conversations swifter than expected and we reach the target in 2 weeks. Rachel and Jemma decide to swap baking for cheese cutting and stay on our dispatch team after joining as Christmas temps.

2021

We decide to relaunch our website, relaunch an app, rebrand our design (and name)and double our product offering, all over the next 6 months, no pressure right?

2021

We take on the next door unit - we’ve grown up fast. 17 employees, almost 7,000sqft. Well on our way to taking cheese mainstream. Billy joins as our Tech Developer, eats an onion within a week of starting, and is affectionately nicknamed Onion Boy. CASSIE Mk2 is a go. 

2021

We have three birthdays in a week and turn our second unit into a barn. Billy goes onion bobbing.

2021

Claragh joins the merry Marketing band and we all go on a scavenger hunt (the two events aren't related).

2021

Our rebrand and new website come into play (9 months in the making). AND we turn 4!!! Although everyone at HQ forgets, so as cheesegeek birthdays go, it's a small one.

2022

January is a big one for us. We launch our new and improved App, making sending and receiving cheese as simple as pressing a button. You also may have seen Edward and Richard's sheep-ish grins on a little TV show called Dragons' Den. We manage to secure investment from none other than Steven Bartlett, yes the happy sexy millionaire, and are thrilled to have him on the cheese board of investors.

Watch Dragons' Den

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