Homestead still has great cheese. Their prices are fair and the store is simple. The factory is in the back and sellls mostly to grocers, restruants, or other bulk buyers. The factory store is a good place to get a variety of cheese. They sell a little of everything from cheese curds, to cheese spreads to meat sticks. They even sell the cheese head hats. They also have 20+ varieties of cheese, some are pre shredded, the rest they will slice for $0.25 a pound or cut you some off the block.
My most recent experience was very unusual and frustrating. My wife and our sons, 2 and 2 monts old, waited in the car for well 50 minutes while I was getting cheese, only 5 minutes of that was the person in front of me ordering. The clerk while very polite seemed to have an issue understanding me. I don't know if it was my Texas accent or that our lines of thought weren't lining up. She also charged me off of a price list she could see bit was higher than what was on the posted board or in the place of the cheese. When I asked her about price she replied that she guessed they hadn't updated the prices yet.
I buy a large amount of cheese to take back to Texas, we usually spend between $100-$200 a trip. This has taken between 10-30 minutes including people in line in front of us. The 50 some odd minuets was unacceptable. They get the 4 stars for the quality of cheese and the fact that this has never happened before.
Update May 2017: I got a lot less cheese this time, however the issue continues where my order was not done well. I ordered 3 cheese in block form, when she was going to cut a pound of cheddar she looked at me and asked how much I thought she should cut to make a pound. Why the customer should be expected to know your product I'm not sure, however from experience the width of the blade is about a pound. I told her that the width of the blade was a good measuring stick, so she put the blade about half it's width from the end of the block, I told her again about the width of the blade and she then measured two widths and cut me exactly 2 pounds of cheese.
While I'll still be buying their cheese, I will be getting it elsewhere. read more
