The fi st retail supporter came in the form of the
local seafood dealer, which sold the tubs on ice next
to the mullet. Next came the local Food Lion, then
Piggly Wiggly, and the Henrys thought they were set
with no idea of what was to come next.
“That store, at its peak, was selling 500 containers
of palmetto cheese a week. A week! Right there in
Pawley’s. So imagine how many people in the summer
from Charlotte, Atlanta, from all over, would pick that
up,” Brian said. Sassy added that she would often get
phone calls from store managers saying people from
out of town were buying 10 tubs at a time to take
home with them.
28 COBB LIFE | APRIL 2019
With Pawley’s Island drawing people from all
over the Southeast, visitors to the island who had
grown to love Palmetto Cheese began asking their
local grocers back home why they weren’t carrying it.
One particularly persistent woman in Pelham, S.C.
wasn’t taking “no” for an answer so, fi ally, the store
manager of the town Publix called the Henrys and
asked if they could bring some of the cheese to the
store.
The catch: people wouldn’t be able to buy it at the
register, but rather would have to bring cash, go to the
back of the of the store and buy it out of the stockroom.
Still, it worked, and after driving four hours
one way multiple times to stock up the one store, an
exhausted Brian called Publix and said there would
need to be more stores in that area selling the cheese
if he was going to keep making the drive. So they did,
and it eventually grew to 11 stores in the area.
A star is born
From South Carolina, Palmetto Cheese
expanded into the Charleston, N.C. and Atlanta
markets, and the Henrys found themselves needing
to find a manufacturer to produce it and help with
distribution because the Henrys and their staff
were “worn out.”
They found a partner in Duke Food Productions
out of Greenville, S.C. and, today, Palmetto Cheese
can be found in 9,300 grocery stores in 47 states and
nearly 250,000 containers are being sold each week.
In 2018, 13 million containers of Palmetto Cheese
were sold. That’s a lot of pimiento cheese!
Palmetto Cheese comes in three varieties – original,
with jalapenos and with bacon. Brian said they
just launched a brand of chicken salad and a smoked
cheddar variety is also in the works.
But, just like the pace of their beloved island,
the Henrys believe in taking everything slow and
doing it right.
/midwayschool.com