"Ten to 15 years ago, the bread was the exciting thing we were doing ... There wasn't as much glory in cheese," says collecive member. Cheese sales have doubled to half of revenues since carbs went out of favor. ALSO: The pizzeria is "almost independent" from the main shop; they are considering credit cards; they all make about $25 an hour; and the breakfast bread operation is only a few years old.
The article also gets into how the shop and pizzeria operate as collectives, with decisions made by consensus and everyone spending some time doing every job in the joint, from accounting to breadmaking. There is a key point raised here, which is that this leads to uneven product quality (for baked goods and, presumably, pizza) and service approaches. "We have 30 different people with 30 different aesthetics ... That's hard for a food store," says one member.
The article also notes the collective has no long term plans for the store. I wonder: would the store be better of as a more conventional, hierarchical, for-profit business? Let the people who know bread do the baking, the people who know cheese work the counter, the people who know Excel handle accounting, rather than rotate everyone around. Accept credit cards instead of having endless meetings about it. Launch some satellite locations south of campus -- decent food on Telegraph for once -- and in SF, maybe Napa.
But then I worry the magic would be gone and quality would somehow slide. That we'd end up with nosebleed Andronico's prices. That the best cheesemongers would feel stifled or underpaid and leave. A collective can be quite effectively capitalist, if all the members are splitting the profits, because everyone feels compelled to help the business do well because they get to share the proceeds. (Although I didn't get the sense of that from the article.)
Sigh. I don't know. Could conventional capitalism ever produce something as wonderful as the Cheese Board?
Posted by ryan at October 8, 2003 03:25 PM | TrackBack