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Cheese lovers, meet Large Marge. She’s a modified Piaggio Ape (an adapted Vespa scooter) with a fridge, shelving and lots of cheese. And soon, you’ll see her at various pop-ups along the Peninsula.
Large Marge – a name borrowed from the movie “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” – is the brainchild of Redwood City resident Georgette Nelson, a full-time cheese buyer who also runs tourism company Kitchen Table Travel. Georgette hopes to make Large Marge the cheese equivalent of the ubiquitous ice cream truck and to introduce the Peninsula to local, historic and unusual cheeses through catering and pop-ups. Large Marge will offer retail-style blocks of cheese as well as premade charcuterie boards and sandwiches.
“I love how cheese tells a story,” Georgette said. “It tells a story of who made it, where it came from, the type of milk, the landscape, everything.”
Large Marge is the newest member of Kitchen Table Travel, which Georgette and her sister-in-law Cat Nelson created in 2020 to arrange small group culinary and real estate tours to Italy. Georgette attended culinary school and cooked at the Google campus before landing her current job of working with cheese importers to source cheese for restaurants and hotels. She views the cheese truck as a culmination of her hospitality experience, her cheese-purchasing job and the global cheese knowledge she gained through her tourism company.
“Cheese is fun,” she said. “Cheese is science. You just take one little thing, like a bacteria in the air, and you add it, or it’s a mistake, and somehow you end up with something totally different.”
The idea for Large Marge came about after Georgette and Cat returned from a trip to Sicily with Kitchen Table Travel.
“In Italy, (Piaggio Apes) are everywhere, but in Sicily, these are especially used for vending to sell fruits and vegetables and cheese,” Georgette said. “In the morning, a guy will pull up with (a Piaggio Ape), and he’ll start yelling, ‘Pomodoro!’ and like all the old ladies come down and start buying their fruits and vegetables.”
Cheeses, jams, olives and snacks are spread through the Kitchen Table Travel cheese truck “Large Marge”, at its home base in Redwood City on August 22, 2024. Photo by Anna Hoch-Kenney. 
Cheeses, jams, olives and snacks are spread through the Kitchen Table Travel cheese truck “Large Marge”, at its home base in Redwood City. Photo by Anna Hoch-Kenney. 
Cheeses, jams, olives and snacks are spread through the Kitchen Table Travel cheese truck “Large Marge”, at its home base in Redwood City. Photo by Anna Hoch-Kenney.
Determined to bring the concept back home to the Peninsula, she placed an order for a custom Piaggio Ape in November, and Large Marge arrived in February. Over the next few months, Georgette worked on getting the Vespa a license plate and health permits, as well as arranging custom detailing with the Kitchen Table Travel logo on the doors.
“(I was getting the doors) painted at SS Customs in Redwood City…and all the cool young dudes there thought that Marge was the coolest truck ever, so they invited me to their Tesla Cybertruck show, which was to raise money for the LEMO Foundation (in Redwood City),” Georgette said. “She did not match all the Teslas there, but she stood out in her own way.”
It was through that car show that Georgette met the LEMO Foundation, which hosted her first pop-up in July. The Vespa is parked at the foundation’s headquarters when not in use.
“The LEMO Foundation are my cheerleaders and supporters,” Georgette said. “This place is amazing. Everyone here is super nice and really supportive.”
Georgette said her ultimate goal is “to get more good cheese out into the community.”
“I’d like to make cheese more accessible to everybody, and also to make it fun, not so serious,” she said. “Remember wine was so serious for so long? Cheese is also kind of serious, and people love cheese so much, it should be more of a celebration.”
Large Marge’s second pop-up will be Italian themed and held on Sept. 14 at The BottleShop in Redwood City from 1-4 p.m. Expect cheese sold in blocks, crackers, jarred vegetables, cured meats, candies and cookies.
“All the kinds of things that you would expect to find in Italy when you’re on vacation,” Georgette said.
Georgette hopes to eventually have a fleet of Piaggio Apes selling a variety of goods along the Peninsula.
“I could even do a bookmobile Marge, I can do a coffee Marge, I can do a gelato Marge,” she said. “I want a whole fleet of these, just bringing joy to the Peninsula, because she is so cute.”
For those looking to expand their cheese palate, Georgette recommends shopping for cheese at Sigona’s in Redwood City and Palo Alto and Bianchini’s Market in San Carlos and Portola Valley. Local cheese brands she recommends are Laura Chenel, Cypress Grove, Valley Ford Cheese, Marin French, Stepladder Creamery and Central Coast Creamery. Laura Chenel and Cypress Grove “were the original goat cheese makers who started a whole movement in the proper way to make cheese and humane treatment of animals and fair pay of workers,” Georgette said, and Marin French is “the oldest continuously operating cheese maker in America. They used to make cheese back in the Gold Rush days and send it down river to San Francisco because there was an egg shortage, and that’s how they would make cheese there.”
Kitchen Table Travel, 415-964-0361, Instagram: @kitchentabletravelco.
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