George Clooney wants to sell cheese

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[size=32]George Clooney wants to sell cheese[/size]
 
 

 

 

 

 
George Clooney reportedly wants to sell his favourite Italian cheese in America.
The 'Ocean's Eleven' star is said to have become a fan of Pecorino de Pardu cheese - which is made by a farmer named Peppino in the lakeside town of Laglio - after sampling the dairy snack whilst on vacation at his villa on Lake Como.
And after previously entering the retail world when he teamed up with Rande Gerber and Mike Meldman to co-found the Casamigos tequila brand - which they later sold to Diageo in 2017 - he's believed to now be planning another business venture with the Italian cheese. 
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A source said: "George can't get enough of Peppino's Pecorino, and gorges on huge chunks of it at the end of almost every meal. [His wife] Amal makes him brush his teeth immediately afterwards because she doesn't like his cheesy breath. But the taste is so good, she too thinks George will find a big new market for it."
The 58-year-old actor is said to have already shipped 32kg of the hard, salty, sheep-milk cheese back to Los Angeles, which he intends on handing out as samples to his friends and potential customers.
Speaking to the Daily Star Sunday newspaper, the source added: "As well as acting, George has been aching for a new entrepreneurial project. Now he thinks he's sniffed out his next big thing."
If the 'Catch 22' actor does decide to sell Peppino's cheese in the States, it will transform the life of the farmer and his family, who currently sell most of their produce from a small van parked close to George's Lake Como estate.
And Peppino has revealed the first time George bulk ordered cheese, he received the equivalent of £350 in tips.
He said: "They told me how much they like my cheese and usually take the seasoned and four-week-old varieties."

I wonder if that's the same guy who was selling cheese to George from the trunk of his car a while back?

I think that was in Sardinia, Lizzy.

But I think I know the van they're talking about which travels around the local villages - a lovely and unusual experience and much better than a supermarket....

PAN - Do you not have food trucks in the UK? We have them here by the thousands. They're like restaurants on wheels and sell all kinds of food, cooked and ready to eat. I haven't seen one dedicated to farm products or cheese or the like, but I'm sure they exist somewhere, too. Actually, I'm surprised more people haven't turned to food trucks as a way to avoid the high cost of renting/buying a store.

The food truck business in DC and parts of Northern Virginia is pretty competitive. But it’s restrictive. Only certain areas in which the trucks are allowed to park.

George may be buying this yummy cheese from Peppino but I’m a bit skeptical of anything beyond George just liking the cheese. The part of the story that claims Amal makes George brush his teeth after gorging on the stuff just seems to stretch the credibility of the ‘source’.
With everything else that he’s involved in he now wants to be George the stinky cheese man. Hmmmm

Whether it's true or not, it's definitely great publicity for Peppino. Maybe that's all this is.

Yep. I think that's right. Very nice of George but exactly the sort of thing he would do.

Donnamarie, no, we have very very few of these vans (the only one I'm aware of is a fresh fish van all the way from Lowestoft on the East Anglian coast).

We have very stringent health and safety rules for food in this country - with the farming unions backing - and the fact that Dump wishes to sell us foodstuffs like chicken which has been chlorinated and then rinsed which our foods standards people would not allow is causing alarm

PAN - I don't know about other cities in the US, but here in NYC the food trucks are licensed, strictly regulated, and often inspected. Most of them are in Manhattan but they show up in the outer boroughs, too. There's a felafel truck around the corner from my house!

What other kinds of products (other than chlorinated chicken - UGH!)  are we exporting to you? I've always thought of the UK as being relatively self-sufficient as far as food was concerned.

Lizzy, the chlorinated (then rinsed they say) chicken is how it's prepared for the US market apparently - and Dump is really hoping we fall out of the EU with no deal so that he can 'give us a deal' which include things like that and other stuff which is treated with pesticides and similar that we banned long ago - hope you try to buy organic!. The name Monsanto comes to mind....

PAN - One of the drawbacks of being such a large country is that a lot of things that affect all of us nationwide are actually regulated on the state or local level - not the federal level. And a lot of the federal regulations rely on the states for enforcement. Too often money outweighs ethics and companies put their profit margin above all else.

Trump recently proposed a plan to partially privatize federal oversight of pork facilities. He would replace almost half of federal inspectors with plant employees. The safety of pork processing will be in the hands of the meat industry. I read that after this plan gets implemented (it may already be in place) he is going to implement similar changes to the beef industry. It’s all about the money and speeding up the inspection process. This is not good. I try to buy organic meat as often as I can but it’s much more expensive.

Organic is on the increase a bit here, but not necessarily for meat (which is expensive), because many people are treating the warnings to eat a lot less meat seriously - mainly because it's not necessarily good for us but also it's not great for the planet. So chicken and fish are becoming much more popular.

And Trump is I presume trying to cut his federal bills and has friends who'd like to make some money in meat processing. Let's hope it doesn't go the way of Boeing and it's self regulation

The reason we have regulations on the food industry - or any industry for that matter - is because when they self-regulate safety concerns take a back seat to profit. If they followed best practices and put safety first we wouldn't have to have government regulations.

Exactly Lizzy. Trump’s deregulatory actions since he took office is all about one thing. Greed and appeasing big business. It’s not about protecting people or the environment. And it’s another way of hollowing out the Federal Government. Self-regulation is a recipe for disaster.

Right, let's get back on topic. Much as I love cheese - and pecorino is always good - I can't see this turning into a casamigos sort of venture. This is small-scale artisanal cheese and production will be limited by the amount of milk the guy can get his hands on and how much he can make at any one time.

My suggestion is that George might have bought some cheese to take home, either to Sonning or to L.A. - or simply bought some while he was in Laglio.
And somebody made up a story about it turning it into a business.
There are quite strict regulations in importing food into other countries, and neither the States nor the UK make it really easy to import them, especially when you want to sell them for business.

It's always been very easy to import food from Europe to the UK as long as EU laws are followed (which they should be, when coming from another EU country). It'll be a pain in the backside though if we leave the EU without a deal. Then it's anyone's guess what rules both sides will implement.