"I Charged $7,000 For A Cheese Board": This 22-Year-Old Is Defending The Cost Of Her Viral Grazing Table After People Claimed It Was Overpriced
For those of you who love charcuterie boards and spend way too much time on TikTok, you might be familiar with Sophisticated Spreads — a company focused on creating aesthetically pleasing cheese boards and grazing tables run by 22-year-old USC student Emmy Rener.
In case you're not intimately familiar with cheese board TikTok: With over 300,000 TikTok followers, Emmy's account is easily one of the most-followed cheese board pages on the app. Recently, she went viral for showcasing a $7,000 grazing table she catered for an engagement party. The video received over 5 million views and quite a lot of backlash from commenters who found the price point to be egregiously high.
Sophisticated Spreads / Via tiktok.com
Commenters made it clear that they could not fathom paying $7,000 for a cheese board, and were noticeably confused by the pricing with one person commenting, "That's about $6,500 too much."
"The math is not mathing," someone else wrote.
Some even claimed to have had a similar spread at their wedding for a fraction of the cost.
Despite the backlash, Emmy was quick to respond and break down the price point for her grazing table. "I charged $7,000 for a cheese board, and I'm gonna tell you why," she says in a follow-up video. She continues, "I'm making it clear to the other business owners who don't know their worth: You can charge whatever you want! And if people are booking it and your clients are happy, then you're doing it right."
Emmy goes on to list all of the factors that went into the cost of her infamous grazing table. She specifies that the table was 25 feet long and that it was the only food being served at a 150-person engagement party. The client added a garland that was "hand-woven by a florist" and chose to have artisan cheeses, both of which incur an additional charge.
Emmy concludes by saying, "The real kicker is that we are based in Los Angeles, and this event was in Napa Valley," meaning that Emmy and her team had to drive six and a half hours and stay in a hotel, so tack on an additional charge for travel and lodging. She ends the video by telling viewers, "So before you get your panties in a wad, do your research."
Emmy makes a point to focus on quality for her boards and sources locally from small businesses in the area. "We've kind of cherry-picked who we source from, and we try to support small businesses and artisan companies," she told BuzzFeed. "It's definitely been a process trying to find reliable and amazing products, but I think that's what really elevates the spread beyond just what you could maybe get at the grocery store."
And after giving this glimpse into what goes into her event catering, viewers were a bit more understanding of the price. "The math is absolutely mathing for a 25-FOOT CHEESE BOARD!? FOR 150 PEOPLE??" one commenter wrote.
"This isn't just a cheese board. This is a buffet table. Considering the hotel for a team and the handmade garlands, I think $7k is reasonable," wrote another.
Some even told Emmy that they actually thought she was undercharging for her grazing table, with one person commenting that they "would expect to pay 9–10k for this."
However, people still accused Emmy of pocketing a ridiculously high profit from her grazing table. So, naturally, she made another TikTok. This time, she broke down the exact cost of all the food, decor, labor, and travel for the specific event. In her video, she mentions the minimal profit margins in the food industry in general. "Let's keep in mind that the profit margins in the food industry are not great, guys," she says, "It's about 20–30%."
For the sake of complete transparency, Emmy then pulls up a screenshot from her Notes app of the total cost breakdown. Here's everything it lists:
– $550 in cheeses
– $150 in meat
– $150 garland
– $75 fresh decor flowers and edible flowers
– $100 decor items (which Emmy says are not meant to be eaten but are there for ~vibes~)
– $300 fresh fruit
– $75 veggie crudités
– $50 hummus, honey, pepper jams, chutney, and honeycomb
– $300 dried good items like crackers, baguettes, dried fruit, and nuts (Emmy mentions that this is part of their inventory, but is still factored into the cost)
– $200 special dessert items (which were specific to this event)
– $50 single-use serving utensils
– $300 gas costs for a six-hour car ride
– $600 for a two-night hotel stay for two people (Emmy and her father)
In the end, the direct cost of this event was $2,900, about a 40% profit. But Emmy mentions that this excludes all the overhead, time, and labor for her business. Her two-night stay also meant that she couldn't do other events in LA that weekend, meaning she lost out on additional business. After all is said and done, she told us that the profit margin is probably closer to 30%.
Despite the negative comments, Emmy is confident that she's appropriately pricing her cheese boards. "I definitely didn't realize how negative the feedback was gonna be in the beginning," she told BuzzFeed, "But I know that's not my clientele so I'm able to be like, 'Okay, I'm gonna put this aside' because the people that are commenting are definitely not the type of people who would be ordering from us, which is totally fine."
And when Emmy noticed the negative comments on that first video far outweighed the positive ones, she took it as an opportunity to not only educate her audience, but also inspire other female entrepreneurs who follow her and have been inspired to start their own charcuterie businesses. "I realized there was an opportunity with the 3,000 negative comments to stake my claim," she said, "I think there's a mismatch of what people think they should be charged and what is actually realistic in this day and age with inflation and food costs."
"It's funny, when I posted the follow-up video, the comments were all very positive — it went from basically 3,000 negative comments to 3,000 positive comments. The majority of people were just like, 'This is amazing, I would totally pay for this.'"
It's definitely a stark contrast to when she first started her business with her dad and was only charging $250 for her grazing tables. "When we started, I basically did not know anything about cheese boards," she said. Now, Sophisticated Spreads has a team of four delivery drivers, four employees who work on prep and events, and one employee who handles their website as well as a graphic designer.
While Emmy knows that a $7,000 grazing table isn't accessible to everyone — after all, she told BuzzFeed that she owes much of her early success to shoutouts from celebrities — she still hopes that people can view her company's cheese boards as a small luxury. "We're not trying to only cater to celebrities or be something you can only have if you save up your entire budget for the month. That's not realistic or what we're striving for," she said.
Let us know your thoughts on this $7,000 cheese board.
