The Naming of The Brand

It may seem like the most natural thing to name your business after yourself- especially when you married into a pretty stellar last name (Vaughan.... iconic amiright). But as natural as Vaughan Cheese seems now, that was not the name I had in mind when brainstorming started. As I was readying to leave New York City in 2017, I starting planning what my business would be. I knew I wanted to work exclusively with American artisan cheeses and wanted to connect directly both with the farmers and the consumers. Thus, the idea for a wholesale distribution business was born. That was the easy part. Naming this idea ended up being substantially more difficult than coming up with the idea, though.

My original idea for the name was Atlas Cheese. To me, the visuals were AMAZING! Just think- Atlas holding up a whole wheel of cheese. A massive wheel of cheddar balanced on the shoulders of this God. Atlas translates in Greek to "very enduring" and that felt like a good omen to me. A former employee of mine even drew up the logo for me as a surprise gift. This felt pretty cool to me. Atlas Cheese. Bring it on. But then I started doing some more research and discovered something problematic. Atlas Distribution Company. There was a trucking company who moved quite a bit of product around the country. Product including cheese. So... Atlas Cheese was out of the question.

The next thought was to name it after the location of the company. This was a strategy that worked incredibly well for many restaurants that I'd worked for in New York- Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, Eleven Madison Park- all amazing restaurants that paid homage in their names to the places that housed them. Well, something about that just didn't quite work with where I would live. So, that came off the list.

Through all of this back and forth, I just kept thinking about Vaughan Cheese. With the unusual spelling of Vaughan I was worried. That extra "A" messes people up. Could I actually have the company named after me? Then I considered my mentor, Anne Saxelby and her company, Saxelby Cheese. A truly iconic brand and memorable name. I thought, if Anne can do it with a name like Saxelby, I totally good with a name like Vaughan. And thus, Vaughan Cheese was born.