An expansion eight years in the making is finally underway at the Cheese Board Collective, the legendary Berkeley eatery. Starting next week, the pizzeria’s accompanying bakery and cheese shop is set to temporarily operate out of a shipping container due to construction. The worker-owned collective began construction in July to expand its cheese shop and bakery at 1504 Shattuck Ave. into 1500 Shattuck Ave., a former grocery store next door, worker-owner Vanessa Vichit-Vadakan told SFGATE.
Vichit-Vadakan explained that after Cheese Board first took over the lease for 1500 Shattuck Ave. in 2018, the project got put on hold by the pandemic.
“Finally, after recovering from the pandemic in a way that we felt more stable, we were actually able to buy the building because our landlords were selling,” she said.
Cheese Board has been on winter break since the beginning of the month. While the pizzeria reopens on Tuesday, the bakery is expected to remain closed until construction is completed. Instead, Cheese Board will sell baked goods and cheese out of a shipping container on Shattuck Avenue beginning on Jan. 20, which it announced in a blog post in late December. Drip coffee and espresso drinks are also expected to be available inside the shipping container, although the cold brew has been put on hold. Construction is expected to finish in late spring or early summer.
“The big impetus behind the expansion from the outset, even prepandemic, was to allow for better flow through the store and a better customer experience,” Vichit-Vadakan said. “Because if you’ve been to the Cheese Board, you know that on the bakery side, it’s really cramped and really hard to navigate.”…