The Chicago Bears’ Saturday night victory over the Green Bay Packers had fans — and even Bears players — celebrating with some shredded cheese.
Bears quarterback Caleb Williams was grating cheese during his post-game interview on Amazon Prime, while sporting a large foam grater hat. But he wasn’t alone in the cheeky celebration.
The content creators behind the popular Instagram account Explore Chicago took to the streets on Saturday, asking Bears fans to grate cheese for a video.
“We went through two blocks of cheese,” Leen Alqaissi, 24, said, who runs the account with her sister, Yasmeen. The video got over 8,000 likes, including a comment from Chicago-based Kraft Heinz saying, “We approve this message!! … Shred that cheese!!!”
“We had seen the way the cheese grater idea had completely blown up,” she said. “We were thinking how we could take that and include the Bears fans themselves because we just wanted to bring community to it.”
Yasmeen Alqaissi said people “loved being in the video. We had some people follow us to see the next person grate the cheese and say, ‘Go Bears,’ and stuff like that.”
The sisters didn’t see others outside with a cheese grater, but at least one fan inside Soldier Field was spotted grating some celebratory cheese.
Soldier Field representatives didn’t respond to a request for comment regarding any grater confiscations made at the game.
Several Jewel-Osco locations said they hadn’t seen a noticeable spike in grater sales. The grocer’s parent company, Albertson’s, didn’t return a request for comment.
While sales of graters in Chicago may not have spiked, Houston-based Foam Party Hats has experienced a whirlwind few weeks selling the foam version.
Founder and Venezuela native Manuel Rojas was never really a football fan, but now counts himself as a Bears fan.
The team’s fanbase and it’s longstanding rivalry against the Packers have created a 10,000-person waitlist for the family-run business.
“It’s a Cinderella story,” Rojas said. “It’s like something made out of a movie. Not only is it satisfying for us but also because of how the rivalry has played out this year, and how the Bears have beaten the Packers after so many years.”
Thousands of shoppers have forked over $39.99 for the oversized “graterhead hat,” which went viral on social media after Bears receiver DJ Moore was spotted wearing the hat after the team’s dramatic win against the Packers on Dec. 20.
That game overwhelmed the small-business. Since then, it’s received 8,500 orders. The company hired four more workers, bringing its staff count to 24, and during the Christmas season, employees worked weekends and overnight shifts.
“We say that it ruined our Christmas vacation,” Rojas said. “But we’re not complaining about it. We’re just trying to manage it as fast as possible.”
Founded in 2017 by Rojas and his mother, Grace, the company had seen steady growth after securing an investment during their 2020 appearance on ABC’s “Shark Tank.”
In 2023, the company was making cheese wedge hats that brought in about $30,000 in monthly sales through retailers like Amazon, Rojas said. But soon the Packers, which sells “cheesehead” hats, sent Foam Party Hats a cease-and-desist letter, effectively halting their cheese hat sales.
“We consulted with our lawyers and they said you can probably fight it … but it’s gonna cost a lot of money; money that we didn’t have,” Manuel Rojas said. “So we had to try really hard to find something to counteract that missing revenue.”
Thus, the graterhead hat was born. Out of over 800 products on its website, the graterhead hat has brought in the most business, Rojas said.
“Even before this year, [it] was one of our best sellers, especially during the football season. But it never went viral like [it did] in the last couple weeks,” he said.
A similar version of the grater hat was once sold by Bears fan Jeran Dahlquist in 2013, the Chicago Tribune reported at the time. The company, Graterhead, has since shuttered.
The Bears’ 31-27 comeback Saturday led to more orders for Foam Party Hats.
“Because of the huge demand, we had to backlog [some] orders all the way to March,” Rojas said.
Orders through sellers like Amazon, Target and Etsy had to be temporarily shut down. Chicago area retailers the company supplies — like Clark Street Sports and Jewel-Osco — have also run out of its graterhead hats, he said.
“This entire thing happening with the graterheads is going to open a lot of new doors,” he said. “We’re really excited to try and partner with the NFL, get the license for the NFL and open a new line of revenue for [other] teams and sports.”
When asked whether there are plans to create new merchandise for the Bears’ game against the Los Angeles Rams, Rojas said their first priority is fulfilling existing orders for graterhead hats. The company is discussing plans to expand into a larger production facility.
The company’s loyalty lies with the Bears, he said. The team even sent the family a care package with Bears merchandise.
“[We want to develop new products] specifically for the Bears,” he said. “Because that’s the fanbase that got us to this point.”