For those of you who love charcuterie boards and spend way too much time on TikTok, you might be familiar with Sophisticated Spreads — a company focused on creating aesthetically pleasing cheese boards and grazing tables run by 22-year-old USC student Emmy Rener.
Commenters made it clear that they could not fathom paying $7,000 for a cheese board, and were noticeably confused by the pricing with one person commenting, "That's about $6,500 too much."
"The math is not mathing," someone else wrote.
Some even claimed to have had a similar spread at their wedding for a fraction of the cost.
Despite the backlash, Emmy was quick to respond and break down the price point for her grazing table. "I charged $7,000 for a cheese board, and I'm gonna tell you why," she says in a follow-up video. She continues, "I'm making it clear to the other business owners who don't know their worth: You can charge whatever you want! And if people are booking it and your clients are happy, then you're doing it right."
Emmy goes on to list all of the factors that went into the cost of her infamous grazing table. She specifies that the table was 25 feet long and that it was the only food being served at a 150-person engagement party. The client added a garland that was "hand-woven by a florist" and chose to have artisan cheeses, both of which incur an additional charge.
Emmy makes a point to focus on quality for her boards and sources locally from small businesses in the area. "We've kind of cherry-picked who we source from, and we try to support small businesses and artisan companies," she told BuzzFeed. "It's definitely been a process trying to find reliable and amazing products, but I think that's what really elevates the spread beyond just what you could maybe get at the grocery store."
And after giving this glimpse into what goes into her event catering, viewers were a bit more understanding of the price. "The math is absolutely mathing for a 25-FOOT CHEESE BOARD!? FOR 150 PEOPLE??" one commenter wrote.
"This isn't just a cheese board. This is a buffet table. Considering the hotel for a team and the handmade garlands, I think $7k is reasonable," wrote another.
Some even told Emmy that they actually thought she was undercharging for her grazing table, with one person commenting that they "would expect to pay 9–10k for this."
However, people still accused Emmy of pocketing a ridiculously high profit from her grazing table. So, naturally, she made another TikTok. This time, she broke down the exact cost of all the food, decor, labor, and travel for the specific event. In her video, she mentions the minimal profit margins in the food industry in general. "Let's keep in mind that the profit margins in the food industry are not great, guys," she says, "It's about 20–30%."
Despite the negative comments, Emmy is confident that she's appropriately pricing her cheese boards. "I definitely didn't realize how negative the feedback was gonna be in the beginning," she told BuzzFeed, "But I know that's not my clientele so I'm able to be like, 'Okay, I'm gonna put this aside' because the people that are commenting are definitely not the type of people who would be ordering from us, which is totally fine."
And when Emmy noticed the negative comments on that first video far outweighed the positive ones, she took it as an opportunity to not only educate her audience, but also inspire other female entrepreneurs who follow her and have been inspired to start their own charcuterie businesses. "I realized there was an opportunity with the 3,000 negative comments to stake my claim," she said, "I think there's a mismatch of what people think they should be charged and what is actually realistic in this day and age with inflation and food costs."
"It's funny, when I posted the follow-up video, the comments were all very positive — it went from basically 3,000 negative comments to 3,000 positive comments. The majority of people were just like, 'This is amazing, I would totally pay for this.'"