Cheese Shop Can't Be Stink-Shamed with Warning Stickers, German Court Rules

Mike Pomranz

Let's say you go out to eat and you get a bad soup. You have certain recourses. You could, for instance, leave a negative Yelp review. But there are also things you shouldn't do—like, say, throw a brick through the window. So where does the line get drawn? In the battle between a German woman and her local cheese shop, a court decided that complaining is one thing, but putting up stinky nose stickers was going too far.

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Since opening in 2016, a cheese shop called Tölzer Kasladen in the German town of Bad Heilbrunn has been at odds with local residents—especially its most local resident, Manuela Kragler, the woman who lives above it. According to the BBC, the shop offers over 200 types of cheese and even matures three tons of cheese on site. But instead of being happy about having such an abundance of cheese in their vicinity, the neighbors instead choose to complain about the smell.

Tölzer Kasladen managing director Wolfgang Hofmann stands in one of the cheese warehouses. | picture alliance/Getty Images
Tölzer Kasladen managing director Wolfgang Hofmann stands in one of the cheese warehouses. | picture alliance/Getty Images

Kragler stated that Hoffman "denied there was a smell problem right from the start" and, eventually, she became so frustrated that she affixed stickers to the shop's windows of a nose in a warning triangle. (Inappropriate. But a cool sticker. But inappropriate.) "This is absolutely damaging to business," Hofmann said, according to the German news site Suddeutsche Zeitung.

It turns out, the German legal system agreed. In a ruling this week, a Munich court decided that though Kragler could protest the shop verbally by stating "an expression of opinion" that "there is an odor that is a nuisance and that she finds it stinks," posting signs was a step across the line.

Interestingly, however, Kragler reportedly said that she was happy with the ruling since all she really wanted was the ability to say how much she thought the shop stinks. And in the end, it appears she will be the real winner anyway: Hofmann is apparently already looking to move the shop—which he, for the record, thinks does not stink. He stated that the scent comes from farming activity nearby. But then again, who hasn't used that classic excuse?