From Wine & Cheese Zoom Classes During COVID to Miami's Most Viral Cheese Shop🧀📈

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]Talk to us about the history of Chèvrede from the beginning. How did it get started?

[00:00:03]>> Originally from Miami, born in Kendall, then went to school in Boston, lived in Madrid for a couple years, went to work with my dad in Panama. Did not like what I was doing in Panama. I was in sales.

[00:00:11]He worked in the cosmetic industry, so always knew I was a good salesman, but I wasn't really passionate about what I was doing. A friend of mine bought a place in Casco Viejo, which is like the old town, and he's like, "Hey, let's open up a restaurant." And I had no idea what I was doing. But I used to host a lot of people in my house, and people had a great time. So we ended up, you know, putting this restaurant together called Salva. There was one that opened up in the height of midtown. I want to state that I had nothing to do with that location. The first one was in Panama, and then the second one was in Colombia, and then I ended up selling my shares.

[00:00:38]In the interim, a really famous cheesemonger contacted me named Carlos Yescas to open up a cheese shop in Panama. We ended up opening up the first cheese shop in Panama. Pandemic hit 4 months into the business. You can imagine how, you know, after I flew in all the cheeses and I got all the permits and the regulation. It wasn't good. And I always wanted to come back into Miami. We did something really successful in Panama during the pandemic when people were in Zoom and they didn't want to like Mhm. touch each other because of the whole coronavirus. So we ended up doing these master classes online on Zoom. We'd send you two bottles of wine, little cheese board, and then we'd do a class with cheese and wine pairing. Class started with four people, grew all the way to like 200 people. It was nuts. And during the pandemic, what would happen is that people wanted to like socialize, but they didn't want to see each other, they couldn't leave their house. So after the class, people would stay on Zoom drinking. So they would they would open up their liquor cabinet and talking about the Scotches and the wines they had, and it was completely successful.

[00:01:30]So I kind of wanted to do the same thing in Miami, but I didn't have any presence here. So I called a good friend of mine, Sofia Valverde. Shout out to Sofia. I'm like, "Hey, I have this idea. I don't know how I'm going to put this together.

[00:01:38]I'm going to ship everything to your house. I'm going to open up a social media page and start promoting it." I think within the first 3 months, we had like 10,000 followers without even without even having a location here.

[00:01:48]People thought I was fake, I didn't exist. It was cool because we realized very early on that we were connecting people through cheese and wine. And now, you know, fast forward to to 2026, I realized that my brand is not about selling cheese or not about selling sandwiches. We're more about connecting people. Connecting people that have a passion for quality ingredients, quality stuff.

[00:02:08]A day in Miami. Watch full episodes on YouTube and subscribe.