 After several months of working to sell her product to local markets (with mixed success, due to American unfamiliarity with goat cheeses at the time), she received her first major opportunity when Alice Waters of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California placed a standing order for her cheese in 1980.Waters listed the cheese by name on her menu (as "Laura Chenel's Chèvre", in what may have been the first American instance of goat cheese salad), which provided Chenel with a great deal of publicity.Eventually, her operation would grow to sell over two million pounds of cheese per year.