Alumni of the Berkeley worker-owned institution gathered at the Hillside Club in June to trade oral histories ahead of the shop's 60th anniversary in 2027 — including the founding couple's kibbutz roots, Alfred Peet's skepticism, and at least one manure-cured cheese.

More than 100 people paid to attend someone else's reunion last month. That's the measure of the Cheese Board Collective's grip on Berkeley.

On June 10, alumni of the worker-owned shop gathered at the Hillside Club in North Berkeley to trade stories ahead of the collective's 60th anniversary next year — a panel discussion framed by pizza (no tomato sauce, always vegetarian, one variety a night) and cheese. The evening was organized by L. John Harris, a Berkeley historian and food scene figure once known as the Garlic Guy, who launched a garlic festival at Chez Panisse that still runs today.

Elizabeth Magarian Valoma and Sahag Avedisian, an Armenian American married couple, opened The Cheese Board in 1967 at 2114 Vine Street — the space that houses Fava today. The founding story runs through a kibbutz: Valoma arrived in Israel on an archaeological dig, met Avedisian there, and brought the model home. Her brother Rick Magarian put it plainly at the reunion: "A cooperative, collective life where people worked and created and cared together — that idea clearly took root in her." In 1971, the couple sold the shop to their six employees and stayed on, distributing shares equally and equalizing wages. No titles, no hierarchy, all decisions by vote. The structure remains unchanged at the collective's current home at 1504 Shattuck Avenue.

Not everyone thought it would survive. Peet's Coffee founder Alfred Peet — a North Shattuck neighbor — told the founders they knew nothing about business and nothing about cheese. By their own account, he was right. Their first day pulled $95 in sales. Peet reversed himself: "You'll make it."

The early years were improvised in every direction. Valoma brought in friends' homemade blintzes and pumpkin date-nut bread to sell; cream cheese sandwiches on that bread became a shop staple. Employees built their own shelving and handled plumbing and electrical. Cheesemaking experiments produced at least one manure-cured batch. Bread was a collective education — everyone in the same kitchen, everyone making the same mistakes.

Alice Waters was in the audience at the Hillside Club. She has written that she chose to locate Chez Panisse in North Berkeley "so the Cheese Board would be nearby, because I knew I would be among friends." Bob Klein, who worked Saturday morning shifts at the collective in its early years and later co-owned Rockridge's Oliveto, opened the evening with a single observation about Berkeley in those years: "It was alive."

The collective went on to seed the Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives, which has replicated the Cheese Board's recipes and organizational model at bakeries in Oakland, San Francisco, Emeryville, and San Rafael. The 60th anniversary lands in 2027. Last month's reunion was the curtain-raiser.