Amanda's Big Day

Note that Amanda is eating an ice pop. 'Nuff said?
(courtesy of Huffpo's 11 Funniest Unintentionally Sexual Book of All Time).

Even At An Early Age....

.....Nat liked her pops.


(added 6/7: apparently, Joel and his sister liked pops too!)

Photos from the Flavor Lab

Joel & Danielle's work this week: ain't it beautiful??

From left to right:

• Blackberry & X-tra Organic Cream
• Plum, Organic Yogurt & Tarragon
• Straight-Up Raspberry
• Rhubarb, Organic Cream & Cinnamon
• Blackberry & Jasmine.
  

Look for them at the Fleas and at Chelsea Market this weekend!!

Our Shop in Chelsea Market Is Finally Open!

We're here! We're here we're here we're here!! We're finally heeeeere!!!!

It's been a long time coming, but our shop in Chelsea Market has finally opened its doors, right on point for summer.

The response so far has been fantastic. One of our Twitter tweeps, who follows us even though she lives in California, came in with her family 'cause she happened to be in town. Several people who work in the building have come by for a pop every day since we opened. Our Manhattan-dwelling Brooklyn Flea customers are psyched to access pops midweek, all day, whenever. Our neighbors, particularly at Lucy's Whey, Bar Suzette, Dickson's Farmstand Meats, Gramercy Park Flower Shop, Jacques Torres, and One Lucky Duck have been overwhelmingly welcoming. David's and Nathalie's parents both sent potted plants on opening day, but Joel's parents, who live in Chicago, took the cake by showing up unannounced at the market on opening day!

We feel right at home....



Here's what the press has to say about our Chelsea Market shop opening:

New York Times
Tasting Table
Huffington Post
Time Out New York
Our recipe for rhubarb ice pops in New York Magazine
New York Daily News
Serious Eats
NY Mag's Grub Street
Eater
Time Out New York Kids
New York Metromix
Markets of New York
Lickin' It
NYT-The Local
Gail Simmons' ice cream faves in AM New York
Atlantic Monthly website

If you haven't come by yet.....what are you waiting for??

Here are a few of the flavors we've cooked up for this week/weekend.

• Spiced Rhubarb
• Blackberry & Lemon Verbena
• 2-tone Blackberry & Sour Cherry
• Plum, Organic Yogurt and Tarragon (this one's the JAM!! Go Joel!)
  
• Raspberry & cream
  

And the best news we've heard in a long time...real-live rhubarb has been spotted at the farmer's market. If that don't herald the growing season, we don't know what does!

See you this weekend at the Brooklyn Flea as usual.....and at Chelsea Market!!!

R.I.P. Shaba

I'd like to take some time this week to talk about vans.

A few days ago, on the West Side Highway, I totaled our trusty old Shaba. She'd been with us for about a year. Dave and Joel bought her off of a sketchy Craigslist character we call the Flesh Dealer, who allegedly used it to transport women to and from massage parlors. I'm not even exaggerating--these were his words. We bought her for $2000.

The picture above was taken a few days after we bought Shaba, when she broke down for the first time. There would be many others.

We had some great times with Shaba, so named because when we bought her there was a sticker on the passenger airbag that said "Shaba the Great."





The picture below was taken as the tow driver took her away to the junkyard, moments before the street cleaning cops arrived.


Here's another little picture of Shaba, just for rememberance's sake.


Our new van ($1,500) has 280,000 miles on her and a hole in the passenger seat floorboard (I sit mostly in the passenger seat now) from which I can see asphalt coursing by. She doesn't go above 40 miles an hour, and came with a sticker that said "Porky," so that's what we've calling her.

Within 36 hours of owning Porky, we'd amassed 6 parking tickets, to the tune of $680. The first was for not having pasted lettering with our business name and address on the doors. As Joel was remedying this very problem with acrylic adhesive lettering in the hardware store parking lot, he received a second ticket for the same offense. The third ticket was because the letters are 2 inches high rather than 3 inches. And so on.

I'd rail on New York City's cops awhile, but given that they saved me from both a bike accident and a car accident this week, I'll keep my mouth shut.

After Sunday's market at One Hanson, Joel went back to the van to find one of the tires completely bust. He replaced it with the spare, which was, as it turns out, a different size from the other tires and made a rubbing noise against the wheel well every time he changed lanes or turned.

After a few hundred dollars of work and several trips to Purgatory (a.k.a. the DMV) Porky passed NYS inspection yesterday.

Welcome, Porky! R.I.P. Shaba.

Pops and Panic Attacks

I moved back to New York City seven days ago today, and here's what my keychain looks like already.

It's been a very full week.

We got our worker's comp set up, touched base with the Dept. of Ag & Markets, and received our keys to Chelsea Market (which account for only two of the above).

We argued over how to display our pops in the five-foot freezer case that was delivered today and discussed the pros and cons of using an iPad as our cash register.

We nearly took a hammer to our printer, which won't print, even after several hours of cajoling.

We picked up thyme from the Greenmarket, ginger beer from the folks at Brooklyn Soda Works (rhubarb and ginger beer?) and bonbons from Daniel at Fine & Raw (strawberry and chocolate?) with which to screw around in the flavor lab.

We ordered stools, bought paint and stamped pop sticks.

Tonight, we spent hours looking for parking in the East Village, then threw our hands up, drove back to Brooklyn and took the train home.


And we made pops for the first time this season, out of frozen fruit. To mixed results.


The rhubarb worked great, as did the blackberries and raspberries, but we were so unhappy with the strawberry & cream pops we made (bland, shardy, worthless) that we threw them out. We've never had to do that with a batch of pops, ever. That was a dark day.

Oh yeah, that same day, I got hit by a car.


Those are the nice cops who drove me and my busted bike back to work.


Suffice it to say, it has been a week during which zen moments have been somewhat elusive. Which is why we've particularly relished the task above, which has kept us busy for four nights: glueing pop sticks to the plywood frontage of our kiosk. The repetitive act is strangely soothing, and it's a good time for us to unwind, brainstorm and be with each other. It's starting to look damn good, too (time-lapse to come)

Seven days to go. And then the real hard work begins.

It Takes a Village

Our new shop opens in two weeks. As you can imagine, it's been a frenzied last few months, and for everything we've gotten accomplished, two more things to do pop up in its wake. It's like playing that arcade game where hippos pop out of holes and you have to punch them back in, and as you slowly get the hang of it, the hippos start coming faster and faster until you LOSE YOUR MIND.

Some people manage to hang onto businesses all by themselves, but there are three of us. Wait, who am I kidding? There are far more than three of us. It really DOES take a village to raise...a pop shop.

Despite her long-guaranteed membership in our highly exclusive Free-Pops-For-Life Club (of which most other members share our last names), our recently degreed friend Judy "Pooty" Goodwin, Esq. acted kindly as pro bono lease-reviewing lawyer. Internet genius Todd Shaffer took our website (have you seen it yet? www.peoplespops.com!!) from dead to live, and Robin Hiner is building a top-notch bespoke counter for our shop. Expert foragers Annie Myers, Johanna Kolodny, Katy McNulty and her boyfriend Jonathan helped us track down frozen fruit with which to start our season, and our new Chelsea Market neighbors Amy Thompson and Mary Cleaver generously helped us track down kitchens. Sergio Hernandez offered some deep insights into the business of running a business, as did Daryl Hanna. Angelic Pam at Progressive got us a sweet deal on van insurance, although this only somewhat makes up for how gouged we're getting on business insurance. The talented Jason Urban dreamed up some t-shirts that we can't wait to see in the flesh (stay tuned!), and Christopher Sloboda managed to design a logo that all three of us can wrap our heads around:


What do you think????

We've ordered bags, molds, labels, and started stamping pop sticks--so far, Joel is 996 ahead of me and David. (Yes, he counted. Back from 1000.) We applied for a line of credit, designed a look for our shop, and filled out our 2009 business tax return. Ol' Shaba is back on the road, shiny new plates, registration and all. Dave and Joel detailed her up and even got a spare tire. She and I will be gunning up north tomorrow to buy some frozen Hudson Valley berries with which to start the season before fresh fruit walzes back into town.

On Tuesday, we make the first pops of 2010. Look out for something involving rhubarb and strawberries sourced from Beth's Farm Kitchen, and through Jim Hyland of Winter Sun Farms, we've also got our hands on some of last year's precious organic blackberries and raspberries from Stone Ledge Farm in Cairo, NY. Using frozen fruit is a bit of a departure for us--traditionally, our season doesn't start until fresh fruit comes into town--but this year's reality is that we start writing rent checks on April 15 and need to have something to show for it. It will be interesting to see whether there's a difference between pops made from frozen or fresh fruit, but given that, after all, our pops are themselves a frozen product, we've made peace with the idea.

And this weekend: the triumphant release of People's Pops 3.0!!

Come see us Saturday as the Brooklyn Flea in Ft. Greene returns outside, and on Sunday's Brooklyn Flea at One Hanson, a brand-new spot for us.

We'll post this week's flavors once we've thunk 'em up.

CHELSEA OR BUST!

Guys, the suspense is over...we're finally ready to announce our BIG NEWS:

PEOPLE'S POPS IS COMING TO CHELSEA MARKET!

As of April 15, you can find us in Chelsea Market's new-ish "Arcade", surrounded by such illustrious neighbors as Lucy's Whey, Jacques Torres and One Lucky Duck. We'll be right in front of the new set of doors on 15th street between 9th and 10th avenue...check us out!

More news to come shorly....things are a-boilin' at the flavor lab!!

Nathalie Attends The North American Pizza and Ice Cream Trade Show

I know it’s a funny thing to say, but I’m totally hooked on trade shows that target the food industry. In Paris, Chicago, New York and San Francisco, I’ve seen the future, and it’s a car crash I can’t but stop to watch.

It looks like this:

• Fake bacon made of chicken
• Japanese drinkable ice cream
• Floppy milk chocolate “slices,” kind of like Kraft singles, but cocoa-flavored and Israeli
• Credit-card-sized cookies to keep in your wallet
• Vacuum-packed salad that releases gelled vinaigrette pearls
• Freeze-dried mussels in a white wine and garlic sauce
• Grated ketchup.

Grated ketchup! It’s for real!!

So I was delighted to hear about the North American Pizza and Ice Cream Show in Columbus, Ohio last weekend, particularly when I learned which pop suppliers would be in attendance. Here was my chance to finally see in the flesh machines that I had only previously fantasized about late at night, toggling between refrigeration-specification websites, PDFs in Chinese and Google Translate.

Despite the fact that most East-Coasters think that the middle of the country is one long strip mall best seen from the air (ignoring the incontrovertible fact of New Jersey), I thought Columbus actually had a lot going for it. We went to the Surly Girl bar, which has a great selection of local and woman-brewed beers. I tried Columbus-style pizza, which is thin-crusted and cut into squares. Some nice guy, seeing us rooting around for parking-meter nickels, quietly handed us an unsolicited quarter. However you want to knock it down, Columbus has an old-school letterpress, at least one artisan baker, a dealer of new and used fountain pens, a decent vintage clothes scene, a European-style food hall, and a big Baptist church that someone’s turned into a bar.

What’s not to like about all that?

The trade show, too, hit all the right buttons. Seminars covered topics like, “Crafting a Flavor Assault,” “What is Frozen Yogurt?”, and “The Best…or Just Darn Good…Ice Cream.” (I really wish I could have attended the last one, if only to understand which of the two the presenter meant to discuss.)

(also puzzling)

I strode through aisles of people selling insulated pizza carriers, bulk chicken wings, slush machines, Coca-Cola fountains, neutral sherbet base, bake-able “Ordervs,” and pizza-delivery iPhone apps.

Vendors advertised Yo-Mazing Dreamsicle flavor additive, world-class corrugated packaging, 100% dairy-free “cream,” breakfast pizzas (“Cash in on the Most Important Meal of the Day!”), text-message marketing, supposedly “organic” flavorings (100% artificially made), Yo-Cream University (a two-day course or frozen-yogurt store owners) and a chemical called Grease Gobbler X-Treme.






The exhibitors had names like Emulso Corp, Mimiccreme (which makes Mimiccreme Sugar Free Sweetened Soft Serve Ice Cream Base,) and the Brutally Honest Kick Butt Quick Service Restaurant Marketing System, which sells I have no idea what.

Some guy tried to sell me a huge Thunderbird dough mixer and, when I wasn’t interested, offered to sell me a copy of his self-published science fiction romance novel.

Natural-gas company representatives offered free massages.


I saw one type of “neutral base” that many industrial pops are made from, and I believe it involved lard. Apparently, it improves mouthfeel. Clearly, the use of roasted peach pulp, strawberries or cream towards this purpose has not been fully explored.

I was told by everyone with whom I spoke that if we ever want our pops to have shelf life, preservatives are an inevitability. And the compostable packaging we were investigating will hasten freezer burn—good ol’ made-of-petroleum polypropylene is the way to go.

I was told that artificial flavors make pops that taste better than pops made with real fruit.

And I spent several hours playing with our dream pops machine.

Although its representatives offered a significant buy-today discount, Joel and David and I ultimately decided not to buy the machine, even though we’ve spent the winter drooling over it. We just can’t afford it right now—or rather, we have other priorities.

The representative took it in stride. “I know you’ll be back,” he said. “And even though you’re tiny compared to everyone else we deal with, you guys are going to work out. You’re doing your homework. I like to see it.” Oddly, his vote of confidence meant a lot to me.

As I left the convention, my head swimming, I passed a sign on the way to the airport that said “THE DICTIONARY IS THE ONLY PLACE WHERE SUCCESS COMES BEFORE WORK.” We have less than two months before pop season officially begins.

Rest assured that we will be hard at work, Crafting a Flavor Assault.

What We've Been Up To

Our van has been spending a quiet winter upstate with Joel's girlfriend Danielle's generous grandmother Nana:




David: "What came first, the van or the garage?"

I'm not kidding when I say that air literally had to be taken out of the tires in order to fit the van in there.

Here's what happened last time we took the van out:



**** ***** ****

So, what have we been up to since you last heard from us?

Well, other than celebrating Mardi Gras:


We've been researching plastics:


And the possibility of outsourcing our painstaking pop-stick-stamping process:


Unfortunately, the smallest possible one-time order is for 13,200,000 sticks.


We've been crunching numbers:


And pushing pop frontiers:


Joel: "What if we just made a pop out of just ICE???"

Here's Joel explaining our new Thai play-toy.




We made into Karen Seiger's wonderful Markets of New York City, published by the Little Bookroom.


Lots more going on, but nothing we're ready to talk about just yet. Just rest assured that we're fantasizing about warmer days...




Love,
David, Joel, Nathalie

p.s. Anyone interested in trading pops for a better-looking website should feel free to contact us. We may be looking to outsource that, too.
p.p.s. Anyone going to the North America Pizza and Ice Cream Trade Show in Columbus this weekend? Holla!