From Lab Coat to Cheesecloth: Dr. Kandice Marchant's Delicious Second Act

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What happens when a medical career ends—but a passion for something totally different begins? In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Kandice Marchant, a retired physician who traded her lab coat for a cheesecloth. After years of serving patients, Kandice now crafts artisan cheese, bringing a scientist’s precision and a cheesemaker’s creativity to every batch.

We talk about:

• How her medical background turned her on to cheesemaking
• What sparked her interest in artisan cheese to begin with
• Creating her own signature cheeses 
• Opening a retail shop
• Why it's never too late to start a second act

If you’ve ever dreamed of changing careers, getting into cheesemaking, or just love hearing from people who follow their passion—you’ll love this episode.

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Transcript

Introduction 0:02
For the love of goats. We are talking about everything goat. Whether you’re a goat owner, a breeder, or just a fan of these wonderful creatures, we’ve got you covered. And now, here’s Deborah Niemann.

Deborah Niemann  0:18  
Hello everyone, and welcome to today's episode. I'm very excited today to be joined by Dr. Kandice Marchant, who does not own goats. However, she is a cheesemaker, and the road she took to get there is one that I don't think you've heard before. I know I was very surprised when I heard her speak at the North American Dairy Sheep Association's conference in the fall, and that's why I asked her to come talk to you today. Welcome to the show today. Dr Marchant.

Kandice Marchant  0:47  
Thank you, Deborah. It's really a pleasure to be here. 

Deborah Niemann  0:52  
It's so funny. I'm used to interviewing so many vets and stuff about their job and everything, and I'm like, oh, well, you're not exactly Dr Marchant, anymore, like because you've retired from medicine, and yes, that's the first big mic drop that you went from medicine to cheesemaking. It's not like you were just in medicine for a couple of months and decided you didn't like it. You had a very long and distinguished career in medicine with one of the top research hospitals in the country. So, let's go back to the beginning. And could you tell people what inspired you to become a physician in the first place?

Kandice Marchant  1:27  
Oh, well, that inspiration goes many, many years. My father was an internal medicine doctor in Milwaukee, so I don't come from a line of cheesemakers or farmers. We do have farmers on my grandfather's side up in Manoa in Wisconsin, but my direct family was not, so I was very impressed with my dad. I followed him around a lot when I was young. In fact, he ran an EKG, an electrocardiology lab in Wisconsin, and as a high school student, I got a chance to work in his electrocardiology lab as a technician and to meet the patients. And I was really just fascinated with, you know, his ability to care for patients. And it was one particular episode while I was an EKG tech who was taking, you know, the heart monitoring. 

I was monitoring a patient or an EKG at the hospital, and she had an acute pulmonary embolism and stopped breathing while I was doing the EKG. And as a young high school student, I could call for the nurse, but I didn't know how to do, you know, artificial respiration or anything, or CPR at the time, and it really made me want to be able to go to med school and to really help people eventually. So it was one of those kind of crystallizing moments that really galvanized my desire to go into medicine.

Deborah Niemann  2:53  
Yeah, and so what was your specialty, and what did your work day look like back then?

Kandice Marchant  2:58  
So once I went to medical school. I did my undergrad at Northwestern in Chicago, but then did my medical training in Cleveland. I came to Cleveland for an MD, and I also enrolled in the PhD program. Some people said I could never make up my mind, so I did both the MD and the PhD at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, because they had a program that I really liked in Cleveland. I was very interested because my undergraduate was in engineering, I was very interested in implant devices, like artificial hearts, artificial heart valves, artificial like blood vessels. And Cleveland had one of the best programs in that, so that's what drew me to come to Cleveland, Ohio for my training. So my specialty, after I finished medical school, I did training in pathology. And pathology, people think of it as just, you know, cutting people up for autopsies, but it's not. Pathology is really the study of disease, and goes from everything from all the blood tests you've ever had, the pathologists are the ones that run the laboratories that do all of the blood testing. 

They're the ones that, if you've ever needed a biopsy, something to see whether you had a malignancy or another disease pathologist will do and interpret those biopsies, and they do all the transfusion in hospitals, so all the blood products they handle that they run the laboratories that do all the microbiology and study, you know, bacteria and viruses and things like that. A lot of people call pathologists the doctor's doctor, because they're the ones that help doctors understand what the diagnosis on their patient and how to treat them.

Deborah Niemann  4:41  
And then how exactly did you wind up getting interested in cheesemaking?

Kandice Marchant  4:46  
Well, that's a little bit of a sideways story as well, so I'll go back to my PhD program at Case. There was a fellow PhD student there from England, and his name was Roger. And we spent a lot of time together, and eventually wound up getting married. And he was a chemist from England. He was born in Birmingham, England, and we spent a lot of time going back and forth from Cleveland to England, visiting family there. And I got to really like the after-dinner cheese boards in Europe. 

So in Europe, they don't have cheese snacks and appetizers like we do in the US, but they will have after a meal, cheese as either a dessert or some type of a cheese presentation. And I love the European cheeses. The softer, the gooier, or the stinkier, the better. And really, really got to like those cheeses. Well, one year, for Christmas, he gave me a chance to go to, a present to go to Murray's Cheese in New York City, one of the best cheese mongers in the country. And they had a three-day cheese boot camp where you tasted 75 cheeses paired with wines and beers, and they taught you all about the different animal styles, the animal milks, the composition of the milks, the chemistry of cheesemaking. 

And as part of the class, I had to read a chapter in a book that maybe your participants would be interested in. It's called On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee, and he goes through the chemistry of food and the chemistry of cooking. And I read the chapter on dairy during that weekend and made these like discoveries of how the chemistry of cheesemaking was very similar to some of the chemistry I knew in medicine, particularly how your blood clots. So my specialty within pathology was blood pathology, or hematopathology, and I ran the lab that did all the blood coagulation tests. Well, it turns out that the chemistry of milk going to cheese curds is really similar to blood going to blood clots. And I went, I have to make cheese. 

I mean, it was one of those things. And I then started doing the Julie Julia thing, where I bought cheesemaking books, and I would, on a Sunday morning, play with making cheese in the kitchen, different types of cheese. So I kind of cooked my way through the cheesemaking book, starting at like fresh goat cheeses or ricottas or, you know, cheese curds, and then making things like cheddars, or goudas and and making all sorts of different varieties so that was kind of the, you know, the thing that really hooked me into cheesemaking this particular three day boot camp. 

Deborah Niemann  7:35  
So how long ago was that, that you made your very first cheese?

Kandice Marchant  7:39  
 It was probably back in 2010 so I would think I did the class in like, 2008 or 2009 and then started fiddling with cheeses around 2010.

Deborah Niemann  7:51  
Okay, and so initially you were just making cheese for yourself and friends and family. 

Kandice Marchant  7:56  
Oh, yeah, yeah. And I had a cheese aging facility set up in my basement. So I read that you could take a regular refrigerator and change the thermostat so you could buy a different thermostat that would change the set point on the refrigerator from, say, 37 degrees to about 50 to 54 degrees, which is your cave temperature. So I had adjusted this refrigerator down in the basement, and I was fiddling with little other ways to humidify it, because cheeses, while they're aging, will need humidity and the right temperature. So that was where I was playing around for quite a few years, in the basement, and have my own little cheese aging facility.

Deborah Niemann  8:42  
And when did you start thinking, hm, maybe when I retire from medicine, I'll start making cheese to sell.

Kandice Marchant  8:50  
Well, I started thinking about that, maybe in 2012, 2013, and then, unfortunately, my husband got quite ill in 2013 and passed away in 2014, and you know, it was very devastating, because I, you know, we were doing research together. And after he passed away, I was really looking for things to do with my spare time, on weekends and things. Then I started taking some additional cheese-making classes. I went to Vermont to Sterling College in Vermont had a two week artisan cheesemaking class. 

There was a cheesemaker from France, Ivan Larcher, that came over and taught how to make French-style cheeses. We spent some time at Jasper Hill Farms in the caves there, learning about affinage. And then I even went back over to England, visited Roger's family, and then took some cheesemaking classes up in Derbyshire as well. The school for artisan food there had cheese chemistry course, and they had a cheesemaking course there I did. A cheese class in California. So I was really thinking about, you know, how to improve my cheesemaking and actually help create my own recipes as well. 

Deborah Niemann  10:11  
As you got closer to retirement, was there a certain thing that happened or, at what point did you say, “I don't want to just sit back on the beaches, and, you know, drink mai tais all day. I want to start a business making cheese.”

Kandice Marchant  10:26  
You know, I guess it wasn't just one day, you know, it became a hobby, and I was producing cheeses for my friends. And I think what happened was there was a new shop that opened in Cleveland. It's called Ohio City Provisions, and they sell only Ohio products. The owner, Trevor Clatterbuck has a farm about an hour and a half south of Cleveland in Stark County, and I brought some of my homemade cheeses over to his shop just to see if my style of Ohio cheese might be something he'd be interested in selling. 

Now for your audience, most of the artisan cheeses in Ohio are hard cheese. Ohio is very much known for Swiss. It's actually the biggest Swiss cheese-producing state in the union, and most of the other cheeses are hard, farmstead style cheeses, lots of Amish cheeses or cheddars. But my love since I had the inspiration from England and Europe, I really like the soft cheeses, like brie and camembert and blue cheeses. So, you know, I went into Trevor at Ohio City Provision, and gave him some of my cheeses to sample, and I heard back from him several months later that he really liked them, but was wondering how they would taste with some of the milk from the farm that's associated with his farm down in Stark County. So I got some of this milk from a place called Pink Valley Farms, and at the time they had really rich, nice Guernsey cow milk. 

And I went home and I did the little scientific experiment where I made my cheese with the Pink Valley Guernsey milk, and I made it with the milk that I was using. I made different styles. I aged them different ways, and I brought them back to Trevor at Ohio City Provisions, and they were blown away by my little cheeses made with their rich Gurnsey cow milk. And he said, you know, you've got to make these cheeses. And I said, Well, you know, I'm still working as a doctor. I'm still working full time, and as a home cheesemaker, you can't legally sell cheese you make in your house because of the Food and Drug Administration and the dairy associations, the regulations, so you have to work at a licensed facility. And he thought for a minute and then, he said, aha. He says, I've got an idea. There is a dairy that's associated with our farm down in Stark County, and I don't think they're making cheese full time. 

Maybe they would lease you some space at the dairy, and you could make your cheese under their license down there. So I took a trip down there and met the Amish guys that ran the dairy there, and brought some of my cheeses for some of his associates to taste. And they were really impressed. So I essentially got to make an association with them and start cheesemaking down there. And because it was made under their license, and they were licensed, I could legally sell it. So Trevor started selling some of my cheeses at Ohio City Provisions. I had a booth at the Shaker Square Farmers Market, and that was my initial foray into the cheese business. So that's when I formulated the cheese business. Was back in 2018 and did it that way.

Deborah Niemann  13:55  
Yeah. And now you've grown a lot, like you started with just this Guernsey milk. Now you make cheese also with goat milk and sheep milk, and I think some combinations, and you've got your own facility. Now, how did all of that expansion happen? What did all that look like?

Kandice Marchant  14:13  
It took a while. So while I was working full time as a physician, I really couldn't contemplate anything other than maybe making some cheeses once a month and selling them just locally at these two places, because it was a pretty small volume. But, you know, thinking ahead in my career, I thought, well, you know, how long do I want to be a doctor? Is this business in cheesemaking something that, you know, am I good enough that I could expand it? Will people buy it? So over time, starting in 20, maybe 2019, or so, I went part time at the clinic, so I worked three days a week, and that would allow me to spend a little bit more time thinking about a business. 

So I'm not a business person. I'm a doctor. I'm not trained in retail or cheesemaking or food businesses, and I spent some time talking to chefs in Cleveland. I spent time talking to other cheesemakers. I joined the Ohio cheese guild as an enthusiast, because they let you do that, and they got me access to talk to other cheesemakers in the state of Ohio and understand what an artisan cheesemaker does, what's necessary for a facility. I took some classes on building a cheese facility, and, you know, a cheese business, so I spent a lot of time learning about that. 

And another group that was really helpful in Cleveland, there's a small business development group that's based out of Cleveland State University and has their offices not far from my house. And I would go in with and talk to them, like once a month, and they were helping me put together a business plan. You know, what would a cheese-making business look like now? My goal in cheese-making is never to make a million pounds of cheese and make a penny on a wheel. My interest in cheesemaking comes from really the academic. How are cheeses made? What are the influences of different cultures? What are the influences of different milks? So for me, that was the interesting part of the business. 

I want to make enough cheese to make really good and delicious cheese that's unique and different. But I don't really feel like I have to scale up and have a factory that's making a million wheels of cheese. So that's my choice. Is to stay a small, artisanal you know, when I said I started with the Guernsey cow milk at the dairy, the manager at the dairy once said, Well, you know, I have another farmer that's got goat milk. Would you ever want any goat milk? I was like, Okay, let's try it. Let's try, see how the cheeses are with goat milk. 

Let's develop some goat milk styles. So I was starting to do that maybe about 2020. Was starting to do some goat milk cheeses. And then last year, there was a new Amish family that moved into the area, I think, from Missouri. They used to produce sheep milk for Green Dirt Farm, and now they're in Ohio, so now I have access to their sheep milk. So I've been working on making different styles of cheese out of sheep milk. So now the only artisan cheesemaker in Ohio that makes cow milk, goat milk, and sheep milk cheese. So I make about now 20 different types of cheeses.

Deborah Niemann  17:35  
Wow. That is so exciting. And you've got your own retail location now, right?

Kandice Marchant  17:41  
Yeah, that I didn't mention during the process, but you know, to really grow the business, even though, right now I don't have a cheesemaking facility. That was the original plan. So pre pandemic, my plan was to develop my own cheesemaking facility and a retail shop. Because from a retail standpoint, the luster of putting a tent up at five in the morning in the rain at the farmer's market was like, it was a little hard. 

So I thought it would be nice to have a retail shop. You could have people eat in, to have cheese and cheese boards and things like that. So I spent about a year looking for a location. I wanted it to be urban in Cleveland, because that's me, and I wanted a place that had a fair amount of foot traffic, that, you know, people could come into the shop. So I settled on a place in Cleveland Heights, which is not far from the university and the med school, where I've got a lot of people, and you know that the street has other bars, restaurants, it has a winemaker and has a couple breweries. 

There's a chocolate maker, so it's kind of a maker street, which worked out well with having, you know, cheese on the street, and there's a baker, so it's got everything, everything except a butcher and a charcuterie. So it sounded to me like it would be a really good location to have both a cheese shop and a cheesemaking facility. And then COVID happened. So I got the plans from the architect, the final plans for this whole facility the day the governor shut down Ohio from COVID, the stock market crashed, and within a week, I was like, I don't know which way I should go with this business. 

You know, should I spend, invest all of this money to make this who knows what's going to happen in two months? So I made the decision at that point that I would continue to make cheese at the Amish dairy. I knew that was a sure thing. I knew in COVID, there's no one else in that room while I was making cheese, so I could safely go down there and I could make cheese, and that I could spend the limited amount of money and put in the retail presence there, so that my thinking. Changed quite a bit within a week of having a very grandiose plan to have everything in one location to, Okay, let's focus on the retail, but let's still make cheese down where I know I can do it. 

Deborah Niemann  20:11  
Do you think that at some point you might go back and add a cheese-making facility? Or are you really happy with the way things are right now? 

Kandice Marchant  20:20  
I'm quite happy with the way things are right now. I could see in the future, doing a cheesemaking facility, but probably not in the location where I am. I might look for another free standing location. It gets into a bit of details, but the building that I'm in was built, you know, almost 100 years ago, and the infrastructure is probably not optimal for a modern cheesemaking facility with kind of creaky basement and everything else. So I think I would probably look for a free standing building of some sort, or somebody else who has a food manufacturing facility and maybe have some space I could do that there. But at the moment, I'm happy with the way things are.

Deborah Niemann  21:06  
So let's go back just for one minute to when you were learning to make cheese. Is there something that you would say to somebody who's just now learning, and of course, hitting a few bumps in the road, having a few batches that don't quite turn out the way you had planned? What would you say to them?

Kandice Marchant  21:22  
Well, I think that, you know, there's a lot of literature out there. There are a lot of YouTubes and other podcasts about making cheese. I'm a firm believer in, if you can take a hands-on cheesemaking class, and that's one thing I've added to my shop. I now do cheesemaking classes twice, four or three times a month, usually on Sunday afternoons. And they're not just demonstration classes. They get their hands wet, and they make everything from, you know, ricotta to farmer's cheese to cheese curds to cottage cheese. 

And a lot of people, they ask a lot of questions during the class, so it's a really good back and forth session in terms of giving them suggestions in terms of, what equipment do you need at home? How do you sanitize things? What if this doesn't work out? What are the fixes I can do? Say, I add this and it doesn't work? What you know? How do I troubleshoot a batch of cheese. So I think that's really, really helpful, and I have fun with it, and I think the people that come to the classes have fun with it.

Deborah Niemann  22:27  
What do you think is next for you in this next chapter of your life, like different cheeses or collaborations, or a book or?

Kandice Marchant  22:35  
Well, you know, they're interesting that you say a book? I have been thinking about that. There's so many books on cheesemaking, though, but I think maybe my personal story of kind of a journey of how you get into, you know, my what's the one phrase I've used – Be careful what you ask for, or hobbies that get out of control, which is kind of what this was, it kind of took over. Was a little hobby that just got bigger and bigger. But for me, I think my love of this industry is really in the creativity and the artistry and making new cheeses. 

I love coming up with new recipes. Like last year, I came up with two new blue cheeses, a Guernsey cow milk blue and a sheep blue that I call Lamberton blue. And I happen to live on Lamberton Road, so it seemed to make some sense, but the cow milk blue won a blue ribbon at the State Fair last year, so that was good. I'm working on some mixed milk cheeses like the Italian robiola, that's a cow, goat, and sheep milk cheese. And I think the mixed milk cheeses are fascinating, and if I've got access to all three, why not try something like that. So making the new cheeses is really one of the things I really love. 

Deborah Niemann  23:44  
That is awesome. I love your story so much. Because I think that so many people are under the assumption that, you know, if they want to have an artisan cheese business, that they have to start with the homestead and the animals, the goats or the sheep or cows or whatever. And it's wonderful that you've proven that you can just skip right over that. I mean, honestly, that's like, that's the hard part, you know, is dealing with all the animals and stuff. If what you really love is making the cheese, you can just focus on making the cheese, while somebody else who really loves raising the animals can focus on just raising the animals.

Kandice Marchant  24:21  
I think that's a really good point, and I made that decision very early on. You know, I'm not a farmer, and I don't think there's any way that I physically could handle a herd of animals and milk them and make the cheese and try to sell it and market it. And I think I would do a disservice to many aspects of the business, but I think that crucial thing, though, is getting access to really good milk. In order to make really good cheese, you need access to good milk. 

So you either need to know local farmers that you can get really fresh milk from, or suppliers that there are more and more suppliers now that are producing what I would call gently pasteurized milk, so that they're low temperature, VAT pasteurized they're not the high temperature and God forbid, don't try it with ultra pasteurized milk, but a low temperature VAT pasteurized milk, the A2 milks like the Guernsey cows that have the A2 casein proteins is more digestible, so trying to get really good milk from that. And you know, if you can find a farmer that's producing really good goat milk that's not ultra pasteurized, and that's a hard one, trying to find that. And sheep milk is almost impossible to buy commercially, you know, at stores, but you can get really good milk, Jersey, Guernsey, especially from some local farmers.

Deborah Niemann  25:47  
Yeah, this has been so fascinating. I know my husband is going to love this episode, because he's kind of turned into the cheesemaker of the family. So you might see him in your shop someday in Ohio after he gets wind of this, because he just loves trying to make new cheeses and stuff. So do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up today?

Kandice Marchant  26:06  
Well, I don't know final thoughts in terms of cheesemaking businesses. I think if you really want to come up with a business for cheesemaking, have a niche in terms of what you do that's unique compared to other cheesemakers, or even if you want to sell cheeses, make sure you have a niche, some hook that will make you unique and different. But for me, I'm the only eat in cheese shop in the whole Cleveland area, and I'm the only one that makes our own cheeses. 

So for me, that was a unique way to get started to market our cheeses. So I think if you're thinking of doing it at home, you know, for homestead cheesemaking, I think you know, understanding how you make the cheese and how small things in cheesemaking can make huge differences in the final cheese that you're making. 

So I think, you know, depending on what you're thinking of doing, if you're starting a business, or if you really just want to make cheese at home, do a lot of reading, do a lot of talking to people, there are a lot of groups that you can, you know, join a cheese guild as an enthusiast, you may learn a lot. You'll learn how to make your cheese, you know, really, really special. 

Deborah Niemann  27:20  
I love what you said about, if you want to do this as a business, to find something unique to do. I always tell people, if you're doing any kind of a homestead business or artisan business, you know, like with cheese, you're not going to compete with Kraft. You know, you need to make, create something of your own. That when they think of cheese, they think of you, not like, oh, what cheese is on sale? What cheddar is on sale this week? 

Kandice Marchant  27:45  
I think you know, the whole promotion of artisanal cheeses is so important that people understand what goes into making them and why they're unique and why they're different. Because they are very different than your commodity cheddars, which are great, but you know, if you need to portray your product as something unique and different, understand what's different about it, and be able to speak to that to a consumer about how you make your cheese. And I think people get really excited when they understand, you know, how I make the cheese, and that I add extra cream to this, and I layer them in the molds and I do this, then they understand that there's something more to that than just mass produce cheeses. 

Deborah Niemann  28:33  
Yeah, exactly, a mass produced cheese that's made entirely by machines. Yeah. So I have loved this conversation. It has been so much fun, and I know our listeners are going to love it too. So if somebody wants to get in touch with you afterwards, how can they find you online?

Kandice Marchant  28:49  
We have a website for the business. It's MarchantManor.com and contact us through that. We have an email at info@MarchantManor.com, and we're also on Instagram and Facebook. We're also on those too

Deborah Niemann  29:02  
Awesome. We will definitely be sure to put those in the show notes for people, in case they're driving or something. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Kandice Marchant  29:10  
Well, thank you so much for inviting me. I've had a great time,

Deborah Niemann  29:16  
And that's it for today's show. If you haven't already done so, be sure to hit the subscribe button so that you don't miss any episodes. To see show notes, you can always visit ForTheLoveOfGoats.com and you can follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/lovegoatspodcast. See you again next time. Bye for now.