06/17/2026
When people ask why Charcuterie is so expensive..
This 👇🏾
What you're looking at is roughly 4.5 hours of prep work before a single item is placed on a board or in a box. When people see a charcuterie table, they see cheese, meat, fruit, crackers, and pretty presentation...
What they don't see is:
⏰️ Hours spent sourcing quality ingredients from multiple vendors
🔪 Hand-cutting and portioning pounds upon pounds of artisan cheeses
🌹 Rolling dozens (sometimes hundreds) of salami flowers and ribbons by hand
🥩 Slicing, sorting, and arranging meats for consistency and presentation
📦 Organizing ingredients for transport and food-safe storage
🧤 Maintaining food safety standards every step of the way
🎨 Creating each display so it looks abundant, balanced, and visually stunning
The reality is that you're not just paying for cheese and crackers.
You're paying for:
▪︎ The ingredients
▪︎ The labor
▪︎ The creativity
▪︎ The experience
▪︎ The hours, day, months and years of practice that allow someone (me) to transform a pile of ingredients that's not only beautiful, but also delicious
These six bins represent hundreds of individual pieces that will become grazing arrangements over the next 3 days, that guests will gather around, photograph, and remember long after the event is over.
By the time a charcuterie display reaches your event, there are often 6-8+ hours invested between shopping, prep, setup, styling, service, and cleanup.
So the next time someone asks why charcuterie costs what it does, show them this photo.
Because charcuterie isn't just food.
It's edible art. 💙
