Swiss Cheese Strategy 2025: Navigating Tariff Cuts and Falling Consumer Demand
Swiss Cheese Strategy 2025: Navigating Tariff Cuts and Falling Consumer Demand
At this year’s World Cheese Awards in Bern, the mood inside the expo center felt almost celebratory. Nearly a thousand Swiss creations competed for top honors, and a standout style of Swiss Gruyère ultimately claimed the crown. From the outside, it looked like a golden moment for the country’s most famous export. But beneath the applause, Switzerland’s cheese sector is navigating a tougher reality.
A Slow Melt in Demand
Even as the awards spotlight glows, demand for iconic staples—especially Emmental—has been sliding for years. A mix of higher global competition, shifting tastes, and the premium cost of Swiss production has dulled appetite at home and abroad. When cheese is both expensive to make and expensive to buy, fewer shoppers are ready to commit to that top-shelf price tag.
Tariff Whiplash in the U.S. Market
Then came this summer’s tariff turbulence. In August, the United States—Switzerland’s second-largest export destination—briefly hit Swiss cheese with a punishing 39% import duty. After last week’s negotiations, that rate has officially dropped to 15%, bringing a welcome dose of relief.
But the earlier impact was already baked in. Swiss cheese exports plunged more than 55% in August alone, right when holiday orders were being placed. Many seasonal shipments were locked in under the higher rate, leaving both importers and retailers grappling with sticker shock that no amount of fondue romance could soften.
Add to that a U.S. consumer sentiment index hovering near historic lows this month, and you have a climate where anything that recently surged in price—especially a premium cheese—is a difficult pitch.
Reintroducing Swiss Cheese to the World
Still, the industry isn’t retreating. Producers are refocusing their messaging to highlight what has always set Swiss cheese apart: provenance, precision, and craftsmanship.
As Lorenz Hirt, chairman of the Board of Directors of Switzerland Cheese Marketing, put it:
“Switzerland is mostly known for its cheese with holes and hard cheeses, but not for the soft cheese, and we have wonderful, marvellous soft cheese and also fresh cheeses. This world championship could be a possibility also to show the world that we have soft cheeses as well.” (Quote from Dairy Reporter)
With global attention on the awards, Switzerland sees an opening to broaden its identity beyond the classics.
Premium Products, Premium Storytelling
To win over today’s consumers—especially the younger ones—Swiss producers are leaning harder into storytelling and tradition. Hirt explained the strategy this way:
“Our products are playing in the absolute premium segment of cheese, and what we have to transport and to communicate is the inner values,” he said. “One of our slogans is what elsewhere is trend, we call tradition. We have a very strong cheesemaking tradition and we are strong in the traditional cheeses.”
It’s a push to remind buyers that what they’re paying for isn’t just taste—it’s heritage.
Courting a New Generation of Cheese Lovers
Producers also know that not every twenty-something is ready to leap straight into a punchy, long-ripened mountain cheese. So they’re adjusting their approach, spotlighting milder, younger styles as the new entry point.
According to Dairy Reporter, Hirt put it this way:
“We have a focus more on not the long-ripended cheeses, but the younger cheeses, which are not as intense in flavor, to get the younger generation to start eating cheese. Then they can start to develop their knowledge of cheese and explore other varieties: but you have to have the mild cheeses for them to come to the cheese world in the first place”
In other words: start them on baby wheels before handing them the big boys.
The Road Forward
Despite the headwinds—from softening demand to international pricing pressures—the Swiss cheese sector is far from folding. Instead, it’s doubling down: elevate under-recognized styles, welcome new consumers with gentler flavors, and tell the deeper story behind every wheel stamped with a Swiss cross.
And if the judges in Bern are any indication, the quality hasn’t budged an inch. The question now is how to make sure the rest of the world keeps tasting it.
Reference: Dairy Reporter How Swiss cheese can survive tariffs and falling demand
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