Food & Beverage

Want your Midwest pizza sales to soar? Lay on the cheese

Midwesterners are prone to ordering pizza with "More cheese, please!" (Photo: iStock)

July 14, 2021

Move over, all you Wisconsin "Cheese-heads"! Ohio is has melted your No. 1 status as a cheese-loving stronghold, indicating the Buckeye State might be a great place for pizza brands to highlight their cheese toppings.

In fact, according to a ranking of top cheese consumption nationally from Crystal Farms, the latest Nielsen data indicates that the center of all that fermented dairy love is actually in southwestern Ohio, where the top two cheese-consuming cities are located in an already cheese-leading state. For instance, the top cheese-loving city — as determined by pounds of cheese sold per capita last year — was the Queen City of Cincinnati.

And right behind Cincinnati, Dayton was ranked No. 2 for its rabid 2020 cheese consumption.

The rest of the top 10 cheese-eating cities list looks like this:
3. St. Louis, Missouri.
4. Kansas City, Missouri.
5. Indianapolis, Indiana.
6. Grand Rapids, Michigan.
7. Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
8. Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota.
9. Detroit, Michigan.
10. Cleveland, Ohio.

According to the rankings, Midwestern U.S. states consume more of the fermented dairy product than any other part of the nation, packing away more than 1 billion pounds in the past year. If you're wondering, that's a sizable 15.5 pounds for every person in the central U.S. region.

Can tomato sauce be far behind?