The Cheese Board Read Online Free

and beautiful mahogany sheen.
    —S. S.
    Though innovation is a source of struggle and tension at the Cheese Board, it is crucial to our creative dynamic. Each product undergoes scrutiny and experimentation until it is impossible to recall the prototype after all its incarnations. The reward of the process is universal pride of ownership as the new product makes its daily appearance on our shelves. Each of the many bakers has brought their own contributions to the recipes; our store’s master recipe book, tattered and scribbled with notations and corrections, is a testament to this.
    Back when we first started making baguettes, almost nobody knew what a baguette was—the word was hardly known in Berkeley. Of course, ten years later you would see as many people walking around with a baguette under their arm as you would in Paris.
    —FRIEDA DILLOO
    Our master recipe book.
    Shattuck Avenue, 1982.
    PIZZA, 1985
    When the recession of the eighties hit us in California, the business suffered and we were worried about our economic stability. We brainstormed about ways to stay viable. There was talk of taking a pay cut. As business was slow, there was time to play around.
    Initially, someone started making pizza once a week on Tuesdays. Then people on other shifts began experimenting, too.
    —ART
    Pizza became a regular staff lunch. Someone grabbed cheese from the case, someone else would run next door to the Produce Center for vegetables. A half an hour later, pizza was served. Customers noticed and wanted a piece, too. Before we knew it, we were selling slices for lunch.
    We had all been talking about what to do because business was slow. At a meeting we decided to try serving pizza on Friday nights from 7:00 to 9:00 P.M. —for fun, you know, just for fun. And that’s how it happened. That first Friday night, everyone stayed after work to check it out. It was a good thing because we needed their help.
    —ART
    What started out as a whim ended up reinvigorating our sales. It was so successful that we needed to open an entirely separate storefront and add new members to handle the volume.
    By opening thepizzeria as a separate division, the pizzeria was able to expand. I was one of the first people hired for the pizza collective, just as it was in the process of splitting off from the Cheese Board. Cheese Board members were beginning to have babies and didn’t have the time to put into a new product.
    —PAM
    The pizzeria quickly developed its own distinct character. Nowadays, friends and families listen to live jazz while sitting at café tables inside and out on the sidewalk in front. The tiny space fills up quickly and spills out into the neighborhood. In good weather, picnickers spread out on the median strip, and the sidewalk is full of people eating a slice as they walk along. The line out the door is echoed down the block by the coffee line at the French Hotel.
    The Pizzeria, 2003.
    BAKING AND BUILDING
    The opportunity to expand presented itself again when the Fish Market next door closed in 1989. The membership voted to take a pay cut to fund the remodel of the space. With no particular plans for how we would use the space, we closed our eyes and jumped in, employing our in-house talent to do the remodeling.
    Fortunately, Berkeley city laws allow the owner of the business to do the work. When I went to get the permits I said, “I’m the owner. I don’t have a contractor’s license, and I’m not an architect, but I do know how to do the drawings, and I do know how to do the work.” They moaned and groaned, but ultimately they allowed me to do the work.
    —MICHAEL
    I had been coming to the store on and off since ’84. It looked different then—it seemed small and exciting. Then as the store changed and spread out, that was nice. There was more of the same energy glowing in a bigger space.
    —JOSÉ RUIZ,
FORMER MEMBER
    By the beginning of nineties, the original concept of a small cheese store had expanded greatly.