Fires, real estate values, labor issues (scarcity AND cost), family business transitions…long-time food shops are disappearing.
A specialty food distributor shuts down. Cookie and sauce co-packers cease operations. A landlord jacks up rents beyond the impossible. All of these happened in 2019 in California. All of these trickle down to make starting and running a specialty food and / or retail business challenging.
At the end of 2018, Healdsburg SHED closed. What is that, you may ask. The tagline was “eat, shop, gather, learn.” Who doesn’t want that?
Eater reported owners Cindy and Doug saying that business declined due to wine country fires. Shed’s marketplace continues online with rustic modern housewares, pantry items, and beautiful garden supplies. (The website is a nice flavor of the actual store.)
Then in 2019 the little specialty food / cheese market that could, the Milk Pail Market in Mountain View, shut down.
I became a Milk Pail shopper in the mid-90s, in the heyday of Internet 1.0 of which I was an instrumental part! For much of my youth, I’d had access to a world of cheese at the Cheeseboard Collective when living in the Berkeley area.
Upon moving to Silicon Valley, I’d kind of downgraded my fromage expectations to the likes of Manchego and Gruyere, because, my young friends, even Trader Joe’s (which was in Menlo Park by then, while still sparse in other locations as my book’ll tell you 😉 did not have cheeses like the soft and fresh Brin D’amour and Brillat Savarin.
Then, my friends told me about the Milk Pail Market. The heavens revealed my dream: bargain European foods and cheeses right in the heart of what is now a huge Facebook campus at San Antonio and California Streets in Mountain View, across from which was a Hewlett-Packard campus at which I had worked a few years earlier. (Even then the Milk Pail was so small it had never caught my attention!)
My friends and co-workers led me to cheese mecca. This became my source for cheese for big parties. This cheese was scored from secret sources, odds and ends, unwanted lots dumped on the cheap, food scored after trade shows…all through the know-how of owner Steve Rasmussen.
Fast forward to 2019, when Google and Facebook are more interested in gobbling up real estate then cheese, and employees are fed free food at work and are more prone to having food delivered at home.
The times changed, and the real estate kept going up.
In the meantime, the family decided it wouldn’t become a multi-generation grocery store. They decided to close. They did it right.
The celebrations went on for months as you can see on the Milk Pail Instagram feed. The Mountain View voice gives more insights about the Milk Pail’s 45 year long cult following.
Next: Jimtown Store, a beloved California Wine Country roadside stop and specialty food maker for 28 years
by Susie Wyshak, 2011
The utterly quaint building had been a community fixture since the time people had to say “it’s so Kodak camera historyable! Or Polaroidable! Or Instamatable! (That is, when people used to shoot photos to capture memories for themselves and to share with friends rather than to create a brand for themselves.)
But I digress, as if I were sitting on the Jimtown porch jawing with a friend over coffee.
The store narrowly escaped destruction by fires in 2019.
The closing of Jimtown’s co-packer coupled with the threat of future natural disasters and decreased tourism formed the perfect storm.
Read more about the magic of the Jimtown Store in the Wine Spectator.
Food business ebb and flow.
It’s easy to think that it’s the Amazon-climate change conspiracy turning our colorful world into black and white.
Yes, the world has definitely changed, even from 10 years ago.
But plenty of interesting businesses are opening, or transitioning, one being an Italian restaurant that’s going vegan. Talk about going with the zeitgeist!
And popular bar in Oakland said it was closing, and based on customer response the owner has decided to keep on keeping on. As long as possible anyway.
As I walk through cities, sometimes I imagine the old clapboard, wooden houses and the uproar as developers wanted to create brick buildings and stone banks in their places.
Cities change, but what’s most important is to create a place that people will want to come to. That’s why I so love working at Market Hall Foods in Oakland – a 30+ year old bakery, deli, cheese shop, specialty food store, grocery and more…all in one unified food hall. It’s magic.
As they say, a big part of any retail success remains location and a diverse community…not just tourists, not just locals, and people who can get to you on public transportation. (It’s amazing how many 90-somethings take the BART subway to the store!)
May we be doing the same in our quest for food in our 90th decade.
Like everyone else, I fell in love with Jimtown and the red truck that could…
by Susie Wyshak, 2011
An adorable old pickup truck is the hallmark of Jimtown, not only at the store but in their logo. Photo by Susie Wyshak, 2011
