Cheese Board Collective: 40 years in the Gourmet Ghetto
by Sarah Henry, berkeleyside.com
July 8th 2011 11:00 AM
A recent afternoon of bread, cheese, and baking at The Cheese Board Collective.
All photos: Christina Diaz
Exploring alternative ways to work in the food industry is a hot topic. Last
week in San Francisco a sold out Kitchen Table Talks, a monthly panel
showcasing local food folk, featured a discussion about successful edible
enterprises that haven’t started the conventional route.
Two of the four panelists hailed from Berkeley. Three Stone Hearth‘s Jessica
Prentice, previously profiled on Berkeleyside, talked about her cooperative
kitchen model. Cathy Goldsmith represented The Cheese Board Collective.
Beyond the obvious culinary connection, each business is unique. What they have
in common? A desire to build community — of workers, artisans, and customers —
around their real food ventures.
Case in point: The Cheese Board Collective, which has served as a beloved
anchor institution in Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto for more than 40 years.
Goldsmith, who has a restaurant background, has been a worker-owner at The
Cheese Board for 16 years. She likes to say that the collective got going “back
in the day” and people who work there do everything “from soup to nuts.” What
that means is the 52-year-old finds herself serving cheese one day, rolling out
dough the next, dealing with health insurance and other human resource issues
on another, along with stocking bread bags, sweeping floors, and scrubbing
toilets.
Goldsmith also tends to do the collective’s media outreach, though she declined
to be photographed for this story because, perhaps fittingly for a collective
owner-worker, she wanted the spotlight to be on the group — which numbers more
than 45 — not on any one individual.
The Cheese Board opened in 1967, when revolution was in the air, in the slip of
a space that now houses The Juice Bar Collective. On the first day of business,
original owners Sahag and Elizabeth Avedisian grossed less than a hundred bucks
after an initial investment of just a few hundred dollars on cheese. The couple
began selling a selection of high-quality cheeses in stark contrast to the
massive orange blocks wrapped in plastic that passed for American cheese then.
How times have changed. And we’re not just referring to the fact that
worker-owners no longer streak naked across the median strip (as they did,
legend has it, “back in the day.”) Today, the store sells 300 to 400 goat,
sheep, and cow milk cheeses from all over the world, including many artisan
American offerings. The store also sells its trademark sourdough baguette and
baked goods, such as scones, muffins, cookies, and chocolate things, as well as
focaccia, rolls, challah, and other breads.
The Avedisians, who had worked on a kibbutz in Israel, wanted to run a
democratic shop where all the workers were owners and shared the wealth. So in
1971 the couple converted the business to a collective, bringing their six
employees into the fold as equal partners. To this day, a new employee earns
the same hourly pay as one who has been with the cooperative since the
beginning. Elizabeth Avedisian, now in her 80s, still does two shifts a week at
the store, without fanfare. Her ex-husband Sahag, who left the collective and
the Bay Area years ago, passed away in 2007.
Over time, batches of freshly baked bread were added to the shop’s repertoire,
followed by pizza in 1985. The store moved from its original location on Vine
Street to its current Shattuck Avenue spot in 1975. It has expanded twice since
then. In 1986 the collective acquired the space vacated by Pig-by-the-Tail
Charcuterie, which now houses the pizzeria. In 1990 the group expanded when the
fish market next door went out of business.
The Cheese Board Pizza Collective operates as its own business, though the
pizzeria and the cheese store operate under the same corporate by-laws. Wholly
owned by its members, the business is incorporated for tax and liability
reasons. All members have equal say in business decisions and are eligible for
the same benefits. Profits are used to buy new equipment or maintain existing
infrastructure, raise wages, and contribute to retirement funds. In keeping
with the collective’s left-wing, pro-labor politics, the store is closed on May
1st, International Workers’ Day. The collective with a social justice
conscience routinely donates food to places that feed the needy — including
Food Not Bombs – and hands out free sandwiches to the homeless.
Goldsmith declined to give hard numbers on the store’s financial health, saying
simply that business is “fine.” She pointed to the heady dotcom days of the
early 2000s as particularly good times. Over the decades, the store has dealt
with varying nutritional whims where bread and cheese are concerned, including
the Atkins diet, carbo-loading, and low-cholesterol regimens, along with
fluctuations in the commodity markets for dairy, flour, and corn, which impact
their operating costs.
The Cheese Board has nurtured other food collectives, and spawned another baked
goods and pizza cooperative, Arizmendi Bakery, which opened in Oakland in 1997.
The Cheese Board crew, which wanted to promote their way of doing business
without expanding into franchises, shared all its recipes and even its
sourdough starter with this nascent bakery. Since then four other Arizmendi
stores have opened their doors in the Bay Area.
In 2003, with the release of The Cheese Board Cookbook: The Collective Works,
the counterculture entrepreneurs shared their popular recipes with the public.
Goldsmith, who lives in central Berkeley, offers other examples of the
collective’s community-mindedness. On a day of protests against the U.S.
invasion of Iraq in 2003, during the tenure of George Bush Jnr., the collective
voted to close the store — on a Saturday no less, the busiest day of the week.
Instead, members baked mini scones and made peace signs from dough and set up
shop outside the North Berkeley BART station, where they dispensed the baked
goods for free to residents on their way to the march. Once the scones were all
spoken for, they headed to the anti-war rally themselves.
When the September 11 2001 attacks happened, people spontaneously started
pouring into the store, said Goldsmith, not to buy cheese, just to be together
during a very dark day. Likewise, the store showed its support in 2008 for
then-campaigning Barack Obama by offering specials on “swing state” cheeses.
Such community kindnesses and civic engagement is rewarded by a loyal
clientèle. In 2007, the group celebrated its 40th year at a dinner at Chez
Panisse, which celebrates its own 40th next month. The chefs volunteered their
time, and Alice Waters refused to accept payment for the meal, Goldsmith told
the Kitchen Table Talks crowd. It was Waters’ way of giving thanks for the
thriving business across the street on Shattuck Avenue that paved the way for
others, like herself, to set up budding food enterprises in an area now dotted
with restaurants, cafés, and fine-food purveyors.
Sarah Henry is the voice behind Lettuce Eat Kale. You can follow her on Twitter
and become a fan of Lettuce Eat Kale on Facebook.
West Berkeley photographer Christina Diaz likes to shoot life as it happens.
Related:
The best pizza in Berkeley? Our readers decide [06.10.11]
Where do you get the best pizza in Berkeley? You tell us [06.03.11]
Out in Berkeley: Delectable blues with Cheese Board Pizza [4.21.11]
The lunchtime music scene at the Cheese Board [09.04.10]
Original Page:
http://www.berkeleyside.com/2011/07/08/cheese-board-collective-40-years-in-the-gourmet-ghetto/
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