The rationalization pressure of agro‐food globalization requires strong tools to help small scale producers to survive in a market. For that reason, the EU developed a quality certification system that offer tools for farmers and small scale food producers that enable them to create  strong local collective brands and promote rural entrepreneurship. The strongest tool is the PDO certification. Some European countries have been successful using these tools to create strong collective brands through PDOs, while others have adopted other strategies. An important difference is how the entrepreneurial function develops and how the local agri‐food system is articulated. This article highlights how collective brands, with and without PDOs are created to support small scale cheese producers in Austria, Spain and Sweden and how these promote entrepreneurship and rural development. An important contribution is the analysis of differences in the entrepreneurial function and the articulation of the local agri‐food system in these three cases. Two of the most important findings are that the PDO was superior than a non formalized form of regional branding in offering market protection and that the invisible hand of the market could generate entrepreneurial functions to strengthen the local agri‐food system and generate synergies for stakeholders, but the visible hand of the state was decisively more powerful to support, promote and articulate a strong local agri‐food system that generates strong synergies for all stakeholders.