Our Story

We looked for it. We couldn't find it. So we made it.

The Vogel Guimarães family moved to New York and, like most Brazilians, immediately missed the food. Not restaurant food — home food. The kind that doesn't travel. The kind that's made fresh, eaten fresh, and remembered forever.

Minas cheese was at the top of that list. We knew what it was supposed to taste like: soft, milky, gently tangy, with the kind of creaminess that only comes from milk handled with care and cheese eaten truly fresh. We wanted that — accessible, consistent, and as good as what we grew up with.

So we decided to make it ourselves.

From a bike to a shipping method

Our first deliveries were made by bicycle. We'd make the cheese, pack it carefully, and ride it to our first customers across the city. It was personal. It was inefficient. And it taught us exactly what our customers cared about most: freshness.

Scaling that freshness was our first real challenge. We solved it by developing our own shipping method — each order is packed with mineral frozen water that keeps your cheese at the right temperature from our kitchen to your door. When it arrives, the water has thawed. You can drink it. Nothing goes to waste.

The cheese rolls took longer

We didn't want to sell just any pão de queijo. The ones we'd eaten growing up were in a different category entirely — crispy outside, pillowy inside, with a complexity of flavor that most recipes never reach.

We spent months developing the recipe with a traditional cook from Minas Gerais. Batch after batch. Adjusting ratios, temperatures, timing. Until the day we pulled a tray out of the oven and looked at each other. That was it.

That's the recipe we use today. It hasn't changed.

Who we are

Patriota Foods is family-owned and family-operated. We make every product, fulfill every order, and stand behind everything we ship. We don't have a warehouse team or a production facility — we have a kitchen, a standard, and a deep respect for the food we grew up eating.

If you're Brazilian, we hope this tastes like home. If you're discovering Minas cheese for the first time, we hope it's the beginning of a long relationship.

— The Vogel Guimarães Family