Recent college graduate Grace Hagerty was out to dinner when her friend’s mom asked the 23-year-old, “So what are you up to post grad?”
“You know, I’m making a lot of charcuterie boards. I think that’s my new hobby,” Hagerty replied. While her friend’s mom was taken off-guard, Hagerty isn’t alone. In fact, there’s a whole subsection of Instagram devoted to cheese plates, and @thatcheeseplate is the most famous account among them, with 98,000 followers and counting.
“It’s funny to watch the trend grow,” says Marissa Mullen, who founded that page and recently left her career as a creative coordinator in the music industry to manage it full-time. “Back in 2013, I would go through the hashtags — #cheese, #cheeseplate — and like all the photos with the hashtags to grow my following. In the beginning, there weren’t that many. #cheeseplate, back in 2013 only had about 40,000 posts or less and now I think it’s over 200,000.” She’s right. As of this writing, there are over 215,000 posts tagged with #cheeseplate, and dozens like Mullen’s @thatcheeseplate and @cheesebynumbers, which share artful arrangements of cured meats, nuts, veggies, spreads, and of course, cheese. Mullen’s own accounts have more than doubled since Vox interviewed her about the growing phenomenon back in January.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Refinery 27
