Culture Club Cheese Bar Goes Belly Up on Capitol Hill

Bummer, dairy fans. Sheri LaVigne has closed her Culture Club Cheese Bar on Capitol Hill's 12th Avenue as of Sunday. Culture Club opened in October, selling carefully-curated cheese plates, fancy grilled cheese sandwiches, and cheese flights, along with beer, wine, and cider.

Also closed is The Calf and Kid, LaVigne's retail cheese counter, which she moved from Melrose Market to be part of her Culture Club space last month due to construction woes.

Seattle Met muses that several factors affected her decision to close, including lack of foot traffic, diners' confusion about the concept, and a few bad Yelp reviews. "Culture Club just failed miserably right out of the gate," LaVigne told Seattle Met. "People come once, and if they don’t have an amazing experience, they won’t ever go back. In a place like Seattle that’s so saturated, you have to really work hard to impress the shit out of people; and that’s what you should do anyway, as any kind of business owner."

It remains to be seen whether LaVigne will start a new project elsewhere. There's one bright spot, sort of: LaVigne still has some beer and wine and more than 100 pounds of cheese in her possession, so she's hosting a huge sale this Saturday and Sunday from 12 to 6 p.m.