The sticky French cheese that's suddenly everywhere

Until a few months ago, the best-known cheese from Burgundy-Franche-Comté was Comté, one of France's most celebrated exports. Over the past few weeks, however, another cheese from the same region has been quietly taking over social media: cancoillotte, which has gone viral on Instagram and TikTok because it costs around €2.50 a pack and is remarkably low in fat.
It started, as these things tend to, with a video. French influencer Johan Papz filmed himself eating cancoillotte with baked potatoes and declared it "the best day of his life" and that his entire approach to eating had "changed forever." The clip spread rapidly, and dozens of similar videos followed.
Cancoillotte is not, it must be said, an obviously glamorous cheese. Its appearance is somewhere between yogurt and wallpaper paste — its nickname, in fact, is simply "the glue" — and its colour hovers around beige. The flavour is reminiscent of fondue. It can be eaten cold, spread on crackers, or warm alongside potatoes and vegetables. It has been produced in France for roughly a century, and is made from metton, a fermented cheese produced from skimmed cow's milk — the fat having been removed to make butter, cream, or other cheeses. The metton is coagulated and dried into a crumbly block, then melted at very high temperatures and seasoned with salt and butter.
Precise figures are still emerging, but early sales data suggests the influencer effect has been substantial. Carrefour told the French newspaper Libération that sales of garlic-flavoured cancoillotte rose 16 per cent last month, with the plain variety up 13 per cent. Market research firm Circana reported a 9 per cent increase in the week of 20–26 April compared with the same period in 2025.
The sudden surge has created an unexpected problem: producers were not prepared for it, and stocks are running low.
What the influencers stumbled upon was not, however, a discovery. Cancoillotte's rise had already been quietly underway for years. A promotional association founded in 2013 spent a decade investing in communications, working with chefs to develop cancoillotte-based recipes, and lobbying for official recognition. Those efforts paid off in 2022, when the cheese was awarded IGP certification — the protected geographical indication that signals quality and provenance and significantly raises a product's profile. Sales have risen 35 per cent since 2018. Tourists visiting the region now actively seek it out.
"The influencers had an impact we never could have anticipated," said Julia Morin, president of the association.
On French TikTok, the cancoillotte moment has generated its own layer of meta-commentary. One user declared it "the new matcha" — a reference to the Japanese green tea powder that became a global phenomenon during the pandemic. Another posted the famous scene from The Devil Wears Prada in which Miranda Priestly tells her assistant "everyone wants to be us," cutting to plates of cancoillotte. Even Serge Papin, France's minister for small and medium enterprises, seized the moment, filming himself buying a pack at a local fair and listing its nutritional qualities to camera.
A regional cheese that spent a decade building its reputation through certification, cookery, and careful promotion has, in the space of a few weeks, become a meme. There are worse fates.