Founder's Circle
Over the years we've pulled more all-nighters than I'd like to admit. Opening the restaurant was one of them. So was the night our Shark Tank episode aired, and then again during COVID, when ecommerce was brand new for us and everything happened at once. The way we always knew a night had gotten out of hand was Curtis. He'd come walking in to start his shift in the morning, and we'd look up, see him, and realize we hadn't gone home at all.
This month, both DJ and Curtis are hitting five years with Rebel Cheese. We celebrated DJ last week, and Curtis is up next week. Two of the people who've been here through almost all of it, and honestly two of the bedrocks this whole place is built on.
DJ started in the front of house at our old restaurant, and he's our production manager now. He's a genuine cheese savant. He knows every cheese we make down to the ingredient, the process, and the exact timing, and if you asked him to recite any recipe from memory, he wouldn't even pause.
In five years he hasn't taken a single sick day, not one, and I've never once heard him complain about anything. He can fix whatever breaks, the cheese equipment, his own car, whatever's gone sideways that morning, which is more than I can say for myself. He's from Arizona, he spends his time off at the movies and live shows, and he's been vegan as long as I've known him. He's been the steadiest part of this whole place, and he's never made a sound about it.
Curtis started as our vegan meat maker, and the truth is he's a vegan meat savant. If you never saw the video of him making our bacon, you should go find it. I'm biased, obviously. I'm also right. These days he runs all of our R&D full time. That matters a lot to us, because we never want to stop testing and trying new things, and Curtis is the one keeping that going.
He's a 4am riser, every single day, which is exactly how he kept catching the rest of us still at it. He's a Dallas Cowboys fan, which we've chosen as a team to forgive. He spends every vacation at the beach with his wife and their dog. When he's not at the beach, he's driving her to her makeup gigs, since she's a professional makeup artist. He's been vegan a long time too.
When you open a wheel of our cheese, the standard you're tasting is DJ's. And the newest thing out of our R&D, The Rebel Roll, came straight from Curtis and the team. Five years of the two of them is most of the reason any of this works at all.
We're celebrating Curtis at the facility on Monday. We don't have a photo of him with his cake yet, so I'm including one from when we celebrated Olivia's birthday instead. He gets his proper moment Monday, cake and all.
If you want a taste of what Curtis has been working on, The Rebel Roll is out now for a limited time and it's insanely delicious. Grab it before it's gone.
Here's to the people who keep showing up,Kirsten CEO and Co-founder, Rebel CheeseTry the Rebel Roll →
DJ with his 5-year anniversary cake.
Our team celebrating Olivia's birthday. Curtis is on the right. 
