If you missed the cicada ice cream fiasco, you haven’t been paying attention. After the Columbia Missourian reported last week that Sparky’s Homemade Ice Cream had made a batch of ice cream full of the screeching insects, it snowballed into a media frenzy.
The Associated Press picked up the story, and things only got worse after the Missourian followed up this week and said the Columbia/Boone County Department of Public Health and Human Services had advised against making the flavor.
Then media everywhere — Google shows the story’s coverage spiked Tuesday with more than 100 outlets running it — began incorrectly reporting that the health department had ordered the store to stop.
But let’s take a step back. The original plan was to debut the ice cream, which was full of cooked, de-winged cicadas, June 2. The shop made a small batch of about 30 scoops, but it sold out June 1 because word had gotten out among some of the store’s patrons.
Before making a second batch, the store called the health department to ask whether there were any rules barring bugs in ice cream. Environmental Health Manager Gerald Worley said the department merely “advised” against it, and the shop’s inquiry was voluntary.
The department doesn’t have any guidelines on cooking bugs, but there was some concern about unknown pathogens. Sparky’s owner Scott Southwick said in an email that he had no problem with the health department’s advice. The store followed it.
The flavor did boost sales at the shop by about 50 percent, Southwick wrote, even after turning away the customers only interested in the very limited supply of cicada ice cream. But he also has had to deal with a horde of reporters asking for interviews, most of which he declined.
“The publicity-to-product ratio was just so far out of whack,” Southwick wrote. “Like, I’m going to go on the BBC, international radio, and talk about a product that we only made one tiny batch of? We really did intend to sell it if we had gotten the health department to endorse it, and I always thought it could go national if we could sell it. What I wasn’t prepared for was it going international in the absence of any product.”
Sparky’s does crazy flavors all the time, Southwick noted. Some, like the “unhealthy breakfast” flavor that contained Rice Krispies and Jack Daniels, only get made once. “Believe me, it wasn’t international news when we chose not to make a second batch of that flavor,” he wrote.
TIGER CHANGES IN WORKS: Three months after the Columbia City Council approved Glyn Laverick as the new developer for the tax increment financing-backed redevelopment project, changes are brewing over at the Tiger Hotel.
Last week, the hotel took over the operation of The Vault, the swanky bar in the basement of the hotel, prompting the exit of beloved bartender Aaron Brown. It’s unclear why Brown left, and he couldn’t be reached for comment. The new owners plan to start offering food and keeping the bar open all week, Tiger Hotel Operations Manager Brad Weiss said.
And plans are in the works for a new bakery, The Velvet Cupcake. Weiss said the plan is to have the bakery, operated by Jackie Putnam, open in two or three weeks. The Velvet Cupcake will make all sorts of baked goods, but the hotel owners especially want it to get into the wedding cake business. “We kind of want to make the hotel kind of a one-stop place for weddings,” Weiss said.
On July 1, the hotel will take over the catering space in the building. Travis Tucker, who owns the next-door Bleu Restaurant and Wine Bar, has been running his establishment’s catering business out of the Tiger. He’ll be moving the catering business out of the hotel, and Tucker said he is looking to find another space to house Bleu’s catering operations. Weiss said there shouldn’t be any disruption in catering services.
By fall, the owners hope to have two floors of rooms remodeled and ready for occupants. Work has already begun, Weiss said, but he cautioned that the fall opening could change.
“The historic nature of the hotel is a delicate process,” Weiss said. “I guess they would rather sacrifice the deadline to achieve the highest quality of the work they’re doing.”
MORE CENTURYLINK JOBS: Bad news for a Warrensburg CenturyLink office is good news for Columbia. The Internet and phone service provider closed a work force management center that employed 30 people there May 19, and many of those jobs will move here, spokesman Greg Gaffke said.
The closure there is part of the company’s consolidation as it finalizes the merger between CenturyTel and Embarq, which started in 2009. That process is expected to be completed in mid-July, Gaffke said. “Many of those employees who lost their positions as a result of the consolidation were offered opportunities in Columbia if they were able to relocate, and some of them have.”
The addition to CenturyLink’s Columbia work force comes on top of the 35 or so employees the company has hired since February. The Warrensburg office closure could add another 30 or so employees to Columbia, Gaffke said.
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