This is S.A.: Milk to market

For Susan Rigg, cheese making is a labor of love that has deep ties to her family roots.

Rigg, founder and owner of River Whey Creamery, is one of the only local cheese makers in Texas. The former bookstore-manager-turned-food-entrepreneur has been open for business for about three-and-a-half years, cultivating her own cheeses and methods.

Rigg went to chef's school at the Culinary Institute of America. She did first year in San Antonio and finished at the CIA branch in Hyde Park, New York.

The process of cheese making, combining food and science, is what Rigg was drawn to about dairy.

"You really have to know your science and understand what's going on as far as what's happening inside the cheese, how to make the cheese come out the way you want it to, but then there's this amazing creative side of things," Rigg's said.

Rigg said she knew she wanted to go into food but wasn't sure what exactly she wanted to specialize in. All she was sure of was that she didn't want to work in restaurants or retail.

Rigg had worked at a Borders as a manager for more than a decade before deciding to take the plunge into the culinary arts, and said the experience taught her a lot about leadership and teamwork.

"They call people like me a career changer," Rigg said. "And yet for me, it was a very clear process, because I loved being in the book business but I did not want to stay in a retail environment so I hired a life coach, and it was an amazing process and food kept coming up, right? And so I was like, 'Okay, I want to do something with this.'"

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