Poop Sandwich Saving Berkeley’s Telegraph
by Steed Dropout
June 30, 2013
Berkeley, Ca.
POOP SCOOP TO THE RESCUE, AS TELEGRAPH AVE. BUSINESSES STRUGGLE
Calling itself Poop Scoop, this phenomenally successful little family business is singlehandedly warming a failing business climate on Berkeley’s world-famous Telegraph Avenue.
The whole world is watching.
“We’ve been saying we need new business ideas to boost the district,” said Roland Peterson, executive director of the Telegraph Business Improvement District (TBID); “we just didn’t have the right business model. Who knew something crazy like this would be the answer.”
Poop Scoop brings 20,000 (mostly) students to Telegraph monthly. “This is almost as good as tourists,” said Barbara Hillman, Director of Berkeley’s Visitors Bureau.
But do they stay around to shop?
Telegraph's Poop-Scoop Scooping in students. Photo by Ted Friedman.
“We just come down to the avenue from [nearby Martinez Commons] our dorm and we go right back,” said U.C. junior, Alan Chan, who, with his girlfriend was guzzling a poop-scoop sandwich — “the Big Pooper.”
“There’s not much poop in our product,” says founder Alex Brown, “just enough to be able to promote, a very small amount made possible by an east-coast supplier, who developed a technique for de-stinking it.”
“Why in the world are you doing this?” I blurted out.
“The kids think it’s funny, and our ice-cream goes well with our fresh-baked cookies, which we warm to freshness for each sandwich.”
Poop Scooped here. Photo by Ted Friedman.THE POOP ON THE POOP
“Try one,” he offered.
I hesitated.
“Try it, you’ll like it,” he insisted.
The first thing, I noticed was that it was dripping all over my clothes. Yech! The hot cookie melted the poop scoop.
I asked some students about this and they recommended “scarfing it down fast. That way you don’t have time to think about what you’re doing — basically consuming hot poop,” said one, as he wolfed down a Big Pooper in five seconds flat. The melted mess trickled from the sides of his mouth, like a bad idea.
Operating out of a hole-in-the wall sized Telegraph Avenue store, Poop Scoop replaced a failed Mrs. Field’s Cookies. “We kept the cookie idea and added the poop,” said Brown.
So strong is the appeal of Poop Scoop that even recent gunfire outside, which made the 11 0’clock news, didn’t keep “poopers,” as they call themselves, from their fix.
Night and Day, Poop-Scoop rules. Photo by Ted Friedman.Record-breaking June rains also failed to diminish scoop’s waiting lines which regularly stretch half a (long) city block, a few miles from the Berkeley hills.
What next, dirt-bag, a tea from dirt or popped-glop (you guess the ingredients)?
The whole world is watching Telegraph as it transitions from demonstrations and social action to wild west marketing.
Dropout’s latest at the Berkeley Daily Planet.
