Editor’s Note: This story marks the second of a monthly series we’ve dubbed “Neighbor Spotlight,” where we write a feature about a person in our coverage area. Submit candidates through Open Source.
ASHLAND — Mistie Poorbaugh-Hray has cheese to thank for her independence — and the character trait seems to run in the family.
Poorbaugh-Hray, 45, grew up in her parent’s cheesebarn — which has grown over four decades from a barn housing farm animals to an emporium of specialty cheese, chocolates, jams, hot dogs and gift items that frequently lands itself in lists of top places to visit in Ohio.
The business now sprawls three separate sites, employs around 90 people and draws nearly 100,000 visitors annually, including high-profile people like Snoop Dogg, Hillary Clinton, Kathy Griffin and several others.
Her parents, Dick and Ronda, sold their sporting goods store to open up the cheese shop in 1978. The barn happened to be in the family’s backyard at the time, Poorbaugh-Hray said.
The move meant long hours for her parents and often Poorbaugh-Hray and her two brothers learned to entertain themselves.
The barn had old wood plank floors, she said. Customers would often drop coins, which meant she and her brothers fished them out and used the booty to buy stuff. The barn’s basement also once housed sheep.
“So we’d go down and feed them. The health department would never allow that sort of thing now,” she said.
During the holiday season, one half of the barn transformed into a Christmas store. The other, she said, would remain a dairy barn.
“We were living the best life. I mean you could eat whatever you wanted. It was like you were living on a farm but you weren’t,” Poorbaugh-Hray said.
She reminisced on the business’s early days with fondness — but they were also hard at times. She said her upbringing made her into the independent, business-savvy woman she is now.
Building a business often meant shortened vacations for the family.
“A lot of times we’d only leave for three days and we never really spent any longer than three days because we didn’t have the people to work for us,” Poorbaugh-Hray said.
During the holidays shortly after opening the cheesebarn, Poorbaugh-Hray remembers her dad telling her they must to sell two more storage barns to be able to go on a family vacation.
“I remember thinking, ‘OK, how can we do this? Do you want my help?’ Back in the 80s and 70s, you know, I took it on like a competition,” she said.
That attitude could be attributed to her nature.
She was MVP on the 1993-94 basketball team at Ashland High School and also did well in softball.
Out of high school, Poorbaugh earned a degree in business education Ashland University. She then taught high school business courses at Seneca Valley Senior High School in Cranberry, Pa.
“I enjoy teaching. But they started phasing business education out of high school — so that career wasn’t really an option anymore,” she said.
So, like any good business mogul, she pivoted after packing up and moving back to Ohio — this time living in Orville — and landed a job working for the area YMCA. She wrote grants for the nonprofit, among other tasks.
“I loved it there, but after nine years — I was ready,” Poorbaugh-Hray said. “My mom and dad asked if I’d be willing to come work for them. I said yes.”
Her parents wanted to expand the business but did not have the person for the job. Her return spawned Best of Grandpa’s Cheesebarn in Norton in 2015. The sister store offers a curated selection of favorites from the store in Ashland.
Poorbaugh-Hray’s move represented the business’ first expansion since 1995, when the cheesebarn decided to offer chocolates with Sweetie’s Chocolates.
She then led the opening of the company’s third site in the Summit Mall in Fairlawn in 2018.
“It’s been great. I didn’t think I would enjoy it as much as I have,” Poorbaugh-Hray said.
One of best things about the move has been watching her children learn about business and its intricacies — outside of the classroom.
“My kids being in the business, I feel like that’s the best gift you can give them. They understand how to give change, get inventory, how to double your price to make money and buy more inventory. This is all stuff they wouldn’t learn in schools and daily life. They’re learning how to be an entrepreneur,” Poorbaugh-Hray said.
So who knows how her children’s experiences will transform the Cheesebarn — now in its fourth generation — and the Ashland area?
Time will tell.
