Osceola Cheese Company, Branson, Missouri

Susie White and her husband, Bill, climb into their late-model white pickup with a paper plate and a knife.

Two hours after they leave their home in Kansas City, Kan., a giant cartoon mouse on a neon purple billboard proclaims, “Six More Miles to the Osceola Cheese Company.”

Their final destination, Branson, Mo., is still more than two hours away, but the highlight of the trip is only five minutes down the road.

Six identical billboards later, Susie and Bill White cross a four-lane highway to turn into a two-acre parking lot. The Osceola Cheese Company rises before them.

Inside, they will find flavors such as chocolate, cranberry and apple cinnamon – varieties one generally finds in cereal aisles where hundreds of glossy box fronts promise sugar highs and cheap prizes.

But at the Osceola Cheese Company in Osceola, Mo., they are flavors of cheese.

“These flavors are to die for,” cashier Alice Kuhnhoff said. “Especially the chocolate cheese. If you like fudge, you’ll absolutely love our chocolate cheese. Just don’t knock it until you try it.”

Nestled at the northernmost edge of the Ozark Mountains on state Highway 13, the Osceola Cheese Company has delivered toothpick after toothpick of unique cheese samples to hungry passers-by for more than 60 years.

Because of burgeoning business and the development of the nearby Truman Lake, the company’s name has changed once and its location twice, but its mission has stayed the same – to provide a place for travelers to take a break from driving and sample cheese. At this it has succeeded since 1944.

The company began as a cheese manufacturer and, at the height of its production, required more than 1,000 local dairy farms to supply the factory with milk. Fifteen trucks traveled the roads 24 hours a day, seven days a week collecting the milk, manager Chris Hannah said.

In 1967, the original owners made the tough decision to stop manufacturing cheese.

“At that point, they were really just a little cheddar plant,” Hannah said. “They chose to turn the factory into a retail store and specialize in variety.”

Hannah said the factory attracts 1,000 visitors each day thanks to that unique medley of flavors.

“We’re a bladderful away from Kansas City and Branson,” he said. “Combine clean restrooms with over 110 varieties of cheese, and few can resist.”

Most of that cheese exists as bite-size cubes in multi-colored plastic Tupperware containers. The samples wait in electric coolers, ready for hungry toothpicks to pierce them and snatch them to their rightful homes – eager customers’ mouths.

The Osceola Cheese Company may give only a toothpick’s worth of cheese away at a time, but with hundreds of customers sampling dozens of varieties of cheese every day, it adds up.

“In the summer months, we give close to 100 pounds of cheese away on the weekends,” Hannah said.

Customers do not stop just for the free samples. They also stop for the variety.

“When I bought the company, we had 60 flavors of cheese, and now we’ve almost doubled that,” owner Mike Bloom said. “We should double it this summer.”

The Osceola Cheese Company’s offerings include standard cheese favorites like mild cheddar, Swiss and Monterrey Jack, but more recent additions like chocolate cheese, cranberry cheddar and apple cinnamon Monterrey Jack raise customers’ eyebrows.

“The upstart has been slow,” Bloom said. “But watch their faces when they sample it. I know we’ve got some winners here.”

Other unique cheeses include the vodka and whiskey cheeses.

Bloom emphasizes that the Osceola Cheese Company is a specialty outlet for cheese lovers.

“I don’t know of anywhere else that you can stop in the middle of the country and find 110 varieties of cheese,” Bloom said. “With that many varieties, you’re going to find something you like.”

Customers can sample most kinds, but a select few stay tightly sealed until customers walk them out the door.

“Beer Kaese and Limburger cheese aren’t allowed for samples because they stink up the whole store,” said Crystal Dutcher, self-proclaimed Osceola Cheese do-it-all. “Beer Kaese smells like cow manure.”

Such a reputation may explain why the most popular cheese is nothing exotic.

“We sold almost 20,000 pounds of string cheese last year,” Hannah said.

A variety of cheeses attracts a variety of customers.

Closing manager Deb Duncan and cashier Charlene Hall have worked at the Osceola Cheese Company for a combined 15 years. Both agree that, like the cheese selection, the clientele is anything but boring.

Regular customers include professional basketball players, Red Hat Society ladies, a singing Santa Claus and, most commonly, cheese-sample abusers.

“I’ve seen a man dump a whole bucket of cheese in his mouth,” Hall said.

But at least he ate the cheese before leaving the store.

“A couple of times, I’ve seen people dump the samples in their pockets or even just steal the entire container,” Duncan said.

  Despite cheese-sample abuse, Hall said she really connects with her customers.

“I feel like a bartender sometimes,” she said. “I’m standing behind that counter, and they just feel like they can tell me anything.”

Many customers travel for hours to visit the Osceola Cheese Company. Terry Davidson, a businessman from Atlanta, said he stopped in because he could not ignore the neon billboards. For customers like him, who may be unable to visit again in person, the company offers mail order and online sales services.

Duncan said the company has shipped to Wisconsin, Hawaii, Alaska, Japan, Canada and even Iraq. She said parents of troops in Iraq see the Osceola Cheese Company as a way to send a little bit of home to their children as they serve their country.

But she said most customers discover the little store that caught the cheese world off guard by following the flashy billboards on state Highway 13.

Bill White finds a parking spot and follows his wife straight to the coolers in the back of the store.

After sampling her fair share of cheeses, Susie White steps up to the cash register, holding her selections close to her body as if the golden dairy chunks were actually sunken treasure she had recovered from the depths of Truman Lake. Hall scans each one, and the total reaches just less than $30. Susie White laughs.

“This won’t last long,” she said. “We’ll attack it with the knife and paper plate as soon as we hit the road again, and we’ll be back in a few days when we’re on our way back home.”

Photos by Erin Pagel