Alison's Pantry brings cheese to the masses

Alison Chuntz wants her company, Pleasant Grove-based Alison's Pantry, to become the Avon of food.

But rather than Avon ladies, Chuntz had "cheese ladies" who fanned out across rural Utah in the company's early years to sell high-quality cheese and nuts to people whose geographic isolation meant they rarely were able to buy such products.

Gradually, the company expanded its offerings, as well as the areas served by the brigade of cheese ladies, until Alison's Pantry was operating in rural farming towns in eight states.

In 2000, Chuntz sold the business — and promptly watched its sales and reputation tumble to all-time lows. Four years later, she bought the company back and set about rebuilding it.

Chuntz's main strategy in that effort is simple: delivering customers' orders accurately and on time. This one idea, repeated consistently throughout her first months back at the helm of Alison's Pantry, went a long way toward repairing damaged trust and bringing former customers back to the fold.

The company still employs many of those same cheese ladies and keeps their enthusiasm stoked with a nurturing work environment that includes an annual Food and Information Show in which distributors gather to network, share ideas and taste the products sold through Alison's Pantry.

The company also offers employees a 25 percent discount on all products, pays 100 percent of employees' health and dental insurance and hires disabled workers from a local workshop.

With the company back where Chuntz wants it to be, she is turning her focus to expanding into more remote areas of the West and adding new product lines and categories — many at the request of customers.