This is my first grocery store opening, and I'm most awed by the scale. Even the larger restaurants where I've worked have been like families. Everyone knows each other and more than enough of each other's business. At my restaurant openings, the VIPs were friends of the owners, neighbors, perhaps a big deal chef around town. Here we're talking Mayor Bloomberg. It's a whole 'nother ballgame. More

After three long years of writing about my restaurant endeavors in the Served column, that chapter is officially ended. For now, at least. Now there's something new. Grocery world. And I'm crowning myself Grocery Girl. More

I am still without a job title, but I have a mission, a first project. I will be composing signs for our cool products and making sure the signs and the products get to live together for all the world to see. This seemed at first like a small task—until I saw the spreadsheets. We're talking thousands of products. More

Starting, growing and owning a small supermarket chain is certainly infinitely more high stakes than working behind the cheese counter. But compared to waiting tables or cooking on the line, my cheese countering has been a sunny walk through the park. Here's why. More

People are afraid of cheese. It's usually older customers who ask about low calorie, low fat, or low sodium cheese. My coworker is from Italy, and no amount of fat free cheddar-buying ladies can help him wrap his head around this "light" cheese phenomenon. "It doesn't make any sense. Cheese is fat," he ponders. "Fat free cheese is like meat-free beef!" More

The routine is as follows: pack and process cheese, help customers decipher between Sbrinz and Tomme du Jura, find out for a distressed mom where we have sauerkraut ("but not in bags!!"), weigh out precisely 1.2 pounds of pot cheese for an ancient lady with a big smile, field calls from cheese wholesalers, nibble on caramelly Piave, dole out samples of Etorki, joke with guys at the deli counter next door. More

The first staff meal I concocted: tuna burgers, wasabi mayo, leftover buttery buns, and a salad with every veggie I got my hands on. The waiters and cooks loved it, and I felt the glow of validation. I had arrived in the world. More

"Try everything!" my fellow cheesemongers told me. "That way when people ask, you'll know." The best way to learn about cheese is to eat it. In fact, it's the only way. So after two weeks behind the cheese counter at my new job at a great NYC grocery store, I have a severe case of cheese belly. More

The cheese manager threw me a white chef's jacket and a baseball cap emblazoned with the store's logo, and I got to work. I wrapped up buttons of ash-coated chevre in slick bundles of plastic, labeled and dated them, stacked them symmetrically on the shelves. I scooped up feta and feta brine and weighed out the packages. I built beautiful sculptures of goat gouda, and comte, and sheep's milk yogurt. More

After many interviews, phone calls, rescheduled interviews, rescheduled phone calls, and days nervously waiting, I accepted an offer with this great New York grocery store that I love. I'm excited now, thinking about it. Goosebump excited! My job title? I don't have one yet! I'm going to learn the business by spending time in all the departments. I've never worked in the grocery biz, and there are a dizzying amount of things to understand: buying, butchering, pricing, catering, staffing, stocking, receiving, and much, much more. More