About Us
EST. September 2021
Flight Cheese Shop is your go-to destination for cheese, advice, recipes and more! Our passion is to help you try the best cheese the world has to offer, and how to use it. We offer a gourmet selection of local & imported cheeses, accompaniments, pairing suggestions and more!
Visit us to learn more about the wonderful world of cheese!
2021 Community Votes Kingston
Platinum Winner for Best Deli!
About Emma
My name is Emma Sulley, and I'm the owner and operator of Flight Cheese Shop!
A few years ago, I was working with the PC Cooking Schools at both Kingston Loblaws locations, and I was handing out samples of cheeses with a chef who knew EVERYTHING there is to know about food, but specifically the cheeses we were sampling. I decided I wanted to be that guy, so off to culinary school I went!
I kept working at the cooking schools while studying, and during the summer I studied cheese specifically at George Brown College in Toronto, because not only was it the thing that made me realize I loved learning about food, but cheese always had a special place in my heart -- I mean, who doesn't love a good charcuterie board?!
Once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the PC Cooking Schools were permanently shut down, and I needed to find a new job. I was working retail at a store in town, but I also ended up being able to work with St. Lawrence College and the WE-CAN Your Way program, teaching women how to start their own micro-businesses. That program had a major impact on me - it was incredible to watch these women come up with the ideas for their businesses, and teaching them how to open and operate their businesses was inspiring... until I realized that if I'm teaching others how to do it, I'm more than capable of doing it myself!
I talked to my family about how I should open my own business, and I came up with the idea of a cheese shop inside of my family's winemaking store. I thought it was the most brilliant idea, and when I started to tell friends about it, they all told me they weren't surprised, because I had been raving about how great wine & cheese is for years. And so the work began - permits, business licenses, equipment purchasing, inventory planning, finding suppliers and all of that good stuff. From the conception of the idea to being approved by KFLA Public Health it only took me about 7 weeks - which is bonkers! But I had so much support from my friends and family, and resources from the course I was teaching, that I was able to make the process smooth and efficient.
One of the things I knew I wanted to have for my business was the idea of a cheese sampler - giving the opportunity for people to try small amounts of different cheeses to see what ones they liked the best, without having to waste it if they hated it... kind of like a beer or wine flight! (Sound familiar?) It clicked that Flight needed to be my name, and off we went!
I started out with 10 types of cheese and 2 types of crackers, and as I write this about 6 months later, I have had over 100 different types of cheeses and currently have about 25 in stock.
I have big dreams for Flight, hoping to expand in the next couple of years and be a go-to spot for people to enjoy delicious cheeses from all around the world!