Limited hours and then you get the best part: Italian customer service. If the shopkeeper doesn't think you need something he might just decide not to sell it to you. You want more than a reasonable amount of toothpaste? Just try to convince the pharmacist that it is for folks at home who miss the Italian brand. He thinks "hmmm. No one needs that much, and if I sell out, then I have to tell my regular customers that I am out, and that will not do." Just part of the art of the everyday in Italy.

I know what you mean about Tuscany. I tried like heck to visit the Cecchini butcher shop in Panzano on my last visit to Tuscany. Apart from the byzantine trading hours, you pretty much need an inside connection - if you want meat, you need to call in advance and order it. When I finally got there while it was open, all he had left was some sausages, and those were already spoken for.

I did notice that the San Francisco one is open Sundays, but the Oakland one as well as the original Berkeley Cheese Board Collective are closed Sundays. The Oakland one used to be closed Mondays as well as Sundays, but I think that they now use Mondays to train workers to open new Arizmendi Collectives. At least that is how they did it when the San Francisco and Emeryville ones opened.

You have to pay attention to the day of the week in the Lakeshore district. There is a great Falafel/Schwarma joint, but it is run by an orthodox Jewish couple and is closed on Saturdays, as is the very good Kosher bakery on Grand Avenue (best macaroons in town). With Arizmendi and the Alley Cat (great bar on Grand) closed on Sundays, you really have to know the day of the week.

I am not a total Sunday prohibitionist. People who travel must eat, so restaurants should be open for one meal on Sundays. I suppose a grocery store that is open for emergency runs of butter and beer are fine, but that really starts to push it. We used to live up in the Oakland Hills, where it was not at all convenient to just run to the store for something. As a result we planned our shopping better.

When we were in rural Tuscany, we certainly planned better (I actually love the Byzantine schedules, with the supermarkets closed when the farmers' market was on, and the rotating days and half days. Very easy to lose track and run into town only to find that the market is closed for a half day, in accordance with the law. And we are not even getting into strikes and worker slowdowns (although non-Italians might be tempted to ask, "how would you know?"). Then there is the matter of siesta).

This is the second time in a week or so that I've come across the Arizmendi site. I presume your local branch is different, but the website itself notes long Sunday trading hours and instead shows the place to be closed on Monday.

Wasn't there a time in the not-too-distant past when bakeries and barbershops and the like were all closed on Sundays and Mondays to compensate for being open on Saturdays?

The John Lewis Partnership, in the UK, for many years resisted Sunday trading (they are one of the world's most successful worker-beneficient companies, although not by constitution a true co-op). I believe that they have moderated on that somewhat (open some/most Sundays now, but maybe closed some Mondays in compensation). The idea was to let the workers decide about work/life balance, and somewhere along the way they decided that for the good of the business they had better not lose weekend sales to the competition.

I'd just as soon see Sundays kept quiet and faith/family oriented - don't get me wrong - but I don't guess there are too many willing to sacrifice their balance sheet for it. If the Oakland Arizmendi pulls it off, more's the power to them.