Along with Peet's Coffee, the Cheese Board is known for its role in starting the North Shattuck neighborhood of Berkeley on its way to becoming famous as a culinary destination: the "Gourmet Ghetto".

The bakery brought the French baguette into vogue for Berkeley consumers, and helped spark a revolution in artisan bread.

[3][5][6][7] The collective have annual beach parties and New Year's celebrations and own land in Mendocino County on which they built a cabin.

[7] The Cheese Board staff tend to favor unconventional pizza toppings and use only fresh, seasonal produce.

[6] The restaurant still has a piano and reserves floor space for the small jazz groups that often perform during peak hours.

[11] Alice Waters, the founder of Chez Panisse, wrote in a foreword to the collective's cookbook that she chose to locate her restaurant in North Berkeley "so the Cheese Board would be nearby, because I knew I would be among friends".

In the mid-1990s, after creating the Cheese Board Pizza, the collective continued its pattern of incubating new businesses, rather than expanding, by helping to create the Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives,[15] which has used the Cheese Board's recipes and organizational structure to launch bakeries in Oakland (1997), San Francisco (2000 and 2010), Emeryville (2003), and San Rafael (2010).