More than three decades later, the collective endures, its 40 members jointly operating the Cheese Board’s bakery, cheese shop and pizzeria, having long ago relocated from Vine Street to the current Shattuck Avenue site. A seeming anachronism in an entrepreneurial age, the business is now a Berkeley institution, supplying the well-fed locals with farmstead cheeses, sourdough baguettes and oatmeal scones.

In a new book, "The Cheese Board Cookbook: The Collective Works" (Ten Speed Press, 2003), members share recipes, stories and history, shedding some light on how this unconventional enterprise operates. Even die-hard capitalists would have to acknowledge that the collectivists are doing something right.

"There’s no hierarchy," says Michael McGee, who joined the collective in 1975. "The pay scale, the hourly rate, is exactly the same, whether you’ve been here 25 years or one year. The philosophy is that everybody’s time is worth the same, no matter what your experience or age."

The flat hierarchy -- with each member’s voice equal and everyone sharing equally in profits -- defines their collective, Cheese Boarders say. In contrast, a cooperative may have a decision-making general manager and varying rates of pay.

Separate, but equal

Opened in 1985, the Cheese Board pizzeria has its own members and operates almost independently of the bakery and cheese shop, although one side will help out the other in a pinch. In both businesses, everyone trains to do almost everything, including bookkeeping. The nine pizzeria members trade off running the register, making the dough, assembling pizzas and working the ovens. On the bakery-cheese side, a member’s shift may include a few hours shaping and baking baguettes, a few hours behind the cheese counter and some time at the register.

The cross-training keeps members engaged and able to cover for others when needed. On the other hand, consistency wavers when every member takes a turn making bread. "We have 30 different people with 30 different aesthetics," admits Steve Sutcher, a member since 1979. "That’s hard for a food store."

Standards are hashed out at meetings, where members can argue that the baguettes are getting too sour or the scones too dark. The monthly meetings are also the venue for approving major purchases, voting in new members or discussing policy changes, such as a recent controversial proposal to accept credit cards. The bigger the decision, the more strenuously the group seeks consensus.

"The benefit is that everybody’s heard, and the drawback is that everybody’s heard," says Ursula Schulz, a member since 1980. "It’s frustrating sometimes. The process needs to include even the wackiest -- to me, the wackiest -- points of view. And we have to keep going until we meet in a place where we’re all comfortable."

Counterculture ways

Even the cookbook project encountered opposition from those who worried that it would be self-aggrandizing. Similarly, the credit card proposal elicited a vigorous debate between those who saw the cards as a service to customers and those who wanted the collective to preserve its counterculture ways. Proponents argued that taking credit cards would enhance business because customers would purchase more. Others shuddered at encouraging such blatant consumerism. In the end, still far apart, members tabled the proposal, with advocates vowing that it would be back.

"I still believe this is the best way to work," says Guillermo Perez, a self-described former "at-risk kid" who first worked at the Cheese Board under its teen mentoring program and later joined the collective. "If we ever didn’t make money, we would probably lower our wages and make sure everybody still had a job. We wouldn’t fire the last person who came on."

After profit sharing, members make about $25 an hour, with generous benefits. A few years ago, they jointly purchased some country property in Mendocino County and built a cabin on it that all members share. They can fight as much as any dysfunctional family, says Perez, but even antagonists know that nobody’s leaving and they have to get along.

Once a year, members have a bouillabaisse party at the beach "so we can remember we like each other," says Cathy Goldsmith, a member for eight years. And the disco ball dangling from the ceiling is a remnant from the annual New Year’s Eve party, when the floor is cleared of work benches, the cheese counter becomes a bar, and members dance all night.

Out-spoken politics

Few retail businesses flaunt their politics as openly as the Cheese Board.

Members take May Day off and have been known to close the store so they can attend anti-war protests. A peace sign decorates the shop window. Every day, the store distributes about 40 free cheese sandwiches to homeless people, and a posted sign offers a discount to the disabled and "those in need." Seniors also get discounts that rise with their age. Centenarian customers -- and the store has a few -- shop free.

Several years ago, the collectivists voted -- after the usual fierce arguments -- to open the shop at 7 a.m. for coffee and pastries. The Morning Bakery, as it’s known, has been hugely successful, forcing the collectivists to develop a large repertoire of scones, muffins, sticky buns and other breakfast baked goods. Customers with bicycle helmets and backpacks line up for lattes, and the sidewalk benches and tables fill with regulars savoring a newspaper and pastry.

At 10 a.m., the coffee setup is dismantled and the cheese counter is readied for duty. Members rearrange cheese displays, prepare new signs and wheel the olives out of the refrigerator. For the next eight hours, a rotating cast services the counter, handing out samples, suggesting, sleuthing. They will help customers through recipes, listen politely to the occasional lunatic,

and patiently guide indecisive patrons who take entirely too much time.

"I don’t remember anything about it except it was orange," says one customer, seeking a cheese he had purchased before.

Another customer wants a cheese he recalls only as "St. Something-or- other." Prodded for more descriptors, he remembers that it was soft, leading the clerk to St. Andre and a Eureka moment.

"It’s a treasure hunt," says Schulz, who works the cheese counter often. Customers come in asking for that cheese they had on their vacation in the Dordogne but can’t remember what it smelled, tasted or looked like. Or, as happened twice on a recent day, they want "authentic Cheddar from the town of Cheddar," a product that doesn’t exist.

Tastes are changing, members say, as both they and their customers become more discriminating. Sheep’s milk cheese is on the rise, while sales of bland, unremarkable cheeses like Port-Salut and Havarti decline. "We’ve gotten snootier, for sure," says Schulz, although some members are dismayed that the shop carries cheeses that retail for more than $20 a pound.

Cheese soars

In the high-carbohydrate 1980s and ’90s, cheese sales accounted for only 25 percent of store revenue, members say. Now, in a shift they attribute at least in part to the Atkins diet, cheese has soared to almost half of the business.

"Ten to 15 years ago, the bread was the exciting thing we were doing," says Sutcher. "There wasn’t as much glory in cheese." Today, in this non- hierarchical shop, selling cheese has renewed prestige. Even founder Elizabeth Avedisian, now in her 70s, still works the cheese counter every Saturday. (Sahag Avedisian, her ex-husband, left the collective and the Bay Area several years ago.)

But it would be hard to convince the pizzeria members that anyone is having more fun than they are. A multicultural group, the team turns out 400 to 600 pizzas a day in five hours. The customer line can stretch past several storefronts to the produce market at the end of the block, and patrons routinely picnic on the grass of Shattuck Avenue’s median strip, savoring their cheesy purchase on the spot.

Every customer gets an extra sliver, originally intended to compensate those whose slice was on the small side. "But inevitably, people said, ’How come I don’t get a sliver?’ " says Arthur Dembling, a pizzeria member of 12 years.

The popularity of the pizzeria might prompt a typical business owner to open another location, or to franchise, or to buy some delivery trucks. But Cheese Boarders think differently. Disinclined to grow but eager to promote the collective experience, they have nurtured and mentored the Ariz-

mendi bakery collective, which now has three Bay Area stores. The Cheese Board provided seed money, recipes and training but has no financial stake.

Future unknown

As for the Cheese Board’s future, there is no five-year plan, only a sense that the members have created a self-perpetuating enterprise. All components of the business -- the cheese counter, the bakery, the pizzeria - - need more room, but members joke that the space committee has nowhere to meet. Whatever path the Cheese Boarders choose, it is sure to be hotly debated.

"We fight, argue, discuss and disagree, but in the end we learn how to work together," says Perez. "If someday I leave the Cheese Board, my attitude on how to work with different people and different opinions -- what I learned from this place -- I can take into the world."

The Cheese Board

1504 Shattuck Ave.

Berkeley

(510) 549-3183