CONCORD -- Cheese straws have been a regional snack for generations. Heath Ritchie's cheese straws produced by the Ritchie Hill Bakery in Concord are all about tradition.

"They have a certain soft crispness to them, which is hard to describe," said Beth Ritchie Alm.

"It's the texture, the crispness, there's a little bite to the, the cheese and then the spices," said Heath Ritchie.

Heath and Beth's father made cheese straws for special occasions as they were growing up.

"He said it was his grandmother's recipe," said Heath.

Five years ago, the Ritchie Hill Bakery was founded to provide the family's cheese straws to a wider audience.

The goal is to produce cheese straws just like those that have emerged from the family's kitchen for years and years.

"I can never say they're as good as dad's, but they're real close," said Heath.

Charles Ritchie runs the kitchen where Heath's cheese straws have been produced since last summer.

"At first, I don't believe the recipe was written down, at all," said Charles.

Care must be taken, not only to get the ingredients right, but to combine them in just the right way.

"You change one method or one ingredient in this recipe and it, it just completely changes it," said Charles.

The cheese straws are small batch.

"We have one little, tiny mixer that we make all of our cheese straws in and it kind of keeps us to a small-batch limit," said Charles.

The company has benefited from the local food movement.

"It seems to be the real trend now that people are willing to pay a little extra to get something made locally," said Heath.

This is called the Ritchie Hill Bakery, but they don't offer typical bakery goods.

"All we make is cheese straws, at the moment," said Heath.

There are other makers of cheese straws, but here they say that's just fine.

"We don't look at it as competition. There's so much variation that there's a perfect cheese straw for everybody," said Heath.

Heath's cheese straws can be found at a growing number of stores, and anybody can order them online. Sales continue to increase.

"It has the potential. It really could be, I think, as big as we can handle," said Beth.

"Being optimistic, I hope that we can grow this into where we could have a whole warehouse facility making cheese straws," said Charles.