Farmstead's Jeff Diamond

MARKET MAN Jeff Diamond is an enterprising, self-described ‘intense’ person.

Jeff Diamond

of Farmstead Cheese and Wine

BY SARA OST

At the Montclair Village outpost of Farmstead Cheese and Wine—the original location, at the Alameda Marketplace, serves Alameda Island—I catch up with Jeff Diamond, the founder, to ask the all-important question: Just how much wine are folks drinking during Covid? » »

‘There was this whole generation of Alameda residents who were young parents who had moved there to raise families, and they couldn’t get enough of learning new varietals and how to pair things,’ says Farmstead’s Jeff Diamond.

«« Though Diamond has been in the wine business since the early 2000’s, he lived a previous life as a marketing and PR executive in independent film and theater. He belonged to a bleeding-edge group of Bay Area creatives working on indies before indies went corporate, or, in his words, “before Miramax went to Disney, and the hippie commune turned into the DMV.” The answer, by the way, is that 90% of Farmstead’s growth during Covid-19 is in wine, not cheese.

Diamond is an enterprising, selfdescribed “intense” person. When the independent film business changed, he changed, too, involving himself in the Bay Area’s salad days of solo performance theater, when awareness and nuance around topics like race and gender were groundbreaking. He worked in tech, turning his marketing chops into a successful agency operation, even managing to survive the 9/11 recession better than many of his peers. Still, he deeply missed working in the arts; but “you’re only as good as your list, and that can change fast,” he says.

“Here I was, taking a skills-assessment test,” Diamond says. “My interests were wine and food and music.”

It was time for a different sort of reinvention.

In those days, the cheese industry was a nascent growth market—growing at 10% a year. At that time in the Bay Area, as with the rest of the country, there just weren’t a lot of places where one could buy cheese that wasn’t block cheddar or dehydrated parmesan with a side of starch— technically, cellulose powder. A chance to lease a shop in Berkeley came along, so Diamond decided to open a cheese store.

Fortune was on his side. He and his new wife had each owned their own homes in North and South Berkeley before marrying. Flush with enough cash from the sale of the houses, he was prepared to sign the lease and bring proper dairy to the market. He called up his old theater employer, who by then was focused solely on the Grand Lake Theater, but also leased a handful of spaces to smaller businesses. Diamond figured his former boss would know if this lease in Berkeley was a good idea.

“He said, ‘You don’t want to do that, you want to go to Alameda!’” Diamond says.

The Alameda Marketplace was still under construction—and would be for a few more years—but the Alameda Natural Grocery was already thriving, though the lunch counter, the meat, the fish, the coffee and the kitchen supply shops all came later. The owner said cheese would be great, as Alamedans didn’t like leaving the island.

But there was a caveat: “There would have to be wine, too, she said,” Diamond says. “Even better!”

Having never before written a business plan, Diamond hunkered down and got to work. Mass market wine options at that time were very limited.

“It was all Rosenblum, Rosenblum Zinfandel, Rosenblum Syrah, 40 SKUs of Rosenblum in some places,” Diamond says. “So that was the palate that people had.”

He recounts that when the shop first opened at the Marketplace, customers were amazed at the variety along with small touches like samples of cheese.

“There was this whole generation of Alameda residents who were young parents who had moved there to raise families, and they couldn’t get enough of learning new varietals and how to pair things,” he says.

Diamond remembers this time vividly. Though he was easily “three steps ahead” of his customers at the time, his own wine knowledge was growing, too. He devoured wine literature and trade magazines. “I thought I knew a lot about wine in 2003, but I soon realized I knew a lot about the wines that I knew about,” he says. “There was a whole world of wine I didn’t know.”

His advice? “The more you taste, the more you taste.” A little more guidance: “Relax, it’s just food”—which became the company’s motto, and pervades the atmosphere at both locations.

The shop proved a hit, and the business grew rapidly in its first decade. Today, the

STAYING AFLOAT ‘Our revenues are up; [it] really speaks to our customer loyalty,’ says Farmstead Cheese and Wine’s Jeff Diamond.

second Montclair location drives most of the growth. The company also hosts more than a dozen wine clubs and newsletters to help customers learn more about wine, cheese and gourmet foods—no matter their preferences or price point. Customers love that there is simply no fussiness to be found with Farmstead; this is a place to learn and enjoy.

Things changed during Covid-19, of course. Farmstead shortened its hours a bit, mainly to suit customers’ changing, work-from-home schedules. The company experienced significant employee turnover as team members opted to weather the pandemic from home. “I have one employee who will always have a job here, no matter what,” Diamond says. “It just might be a while.”

Pre-pandemic fire department standards permitted up to 50 people at a time at the Montclair location, but Diamond now cautiously keeps it to three.

“The fact that with these limitations, our revenues are up, really speaks to our customer loyalty,” he says.

He says he expected people would want to “get in and get out” when Covid hit, but instead he found that many of them wanted to stay longer and chat.

Cheers to getting through this together.

FARMSTEAD CHEESE AND WINE

510.864.WINE, 866.931.WINE. Montclair Village location at 6218 La Salle Ave., Oakland. Open 11am to 6pm, Monday–Saturday; 9:30am to 5pm, Sunday. Alameda Marketplace location at 1650 Park St., Alameda. 9am to 7pm, daily. www.farmstead.biz