Boar’s Head Cheese No Longer Melts and Customers Are Not Happy
If you recently bought some American cheese and noticed something wrong, you're not alone.
I'm a big Boar's Head fan. Almost every day I have their Ovengold Turkey for lunch. And when it comes to cheese, nothing beats their mild provolone or white American. Recently, however, I was disappointed to find out that there's something different about the American cheese I purchased, and I'm not alone.
Last week, my wife was making her signature scrambled eggs and cheese using Boar's Head whole milk white American cheese when we noticed something strange. Parts of the cheese weren't' melting. No matter how long the cheese was in the pan, it remained hard. The same thing happened the next day with a grilled cheese sandwich. After heating the sandwich as usual, the corners of the cheese were still pointy and hard.
We assumed the deli worker mistakenly sliced the wrong cheese for us, so I threw it out and picked up another pound. But we were surprised to find out that the same thing was happening. Is it possible Boar's Head has quietly changed their recipe? Or could this some sort of manufacturing error?
After heading to the Internet for some answers, I found dozens of stories from other Boar's Head customers sharing a similar experience with Boar's Head whole milk white American cheese. Facebook groups were filled with stories from home chefs complaining about their cheese not melting. Boar's Head's own Facebook page also features complaints from customers about the very same thing.
In response to our story, a listener sent us this crazy video of her Boar's Head American cheese not melting.
I started getting nervous wondering if there was something dangerous about the cheese. Is it possible the batch is bad or that a wrong ingredient was put into the cheese? I decided to contact Boar's Head myself to find out what was going on. After just a few hours I received a canned response from customer service.
We sincerely apologize for this experience and will be sure to share with our Customer Service team to investigate. In the meantime, please return the remaining product to the store for a full refund.
While it's nice that they apologized and offered a refund, the customer service rep didn't really answer my questions. With so many complaints online, surely Boar's Head knows if this is a serious problem or not. It's surprising they didn't at least try to explain what may have happened or at least let me know that the cheese isn't dangerous.
I decided to write back and specifically ask if I should be concerned whether the cheese is dangerous or not, and they replied with an admission that they're at least aware of the problem and working on fixing it.
Our Customer Service team is currently looking into this and correcting.
The message included a phone number to call and speak to a customer service rep for more information. After dialing the number the phone continued to ring for almost a minute before it was picked up by a recording asking me to leave a message so someone could get back to me. I explained all about the eggs and grilled cheese and noted that many other people have had the same complaints about their product not melting. Three days later I have yet to receive a call back.
So far there's no official recall on the whole milk American cheese and no official statement from Boar's Head on the problem. We will update this page if we hear back from the company.