We scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream! El Capitan Creamery is a new ice cream venture starting up in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Operated by Seattle crafts man, artist, entrepreneur, and designer Sam Trout, the Creamery is using a unique business model: an ice-cream-of-the-month club. The basic premise: monthly tasting parties with entertainment, local sales only, no deliveries, no storefront. Think small, experimental, and (grrr, I hate the overuse this word) boutique.
The next opportunity to taste the El Capitan Creamery creations is Wednesday, January 27th, 7 – 9 pm. $10 will get you in the door for tastings, the entertainment, and a pint of the ice cream to take home with you. You can bring a friend for free, but you only get one pint for the $10. To reserve your spot, please email [email protected] and to obtain the address. (It’s near the 15th Ave Group Health campus.)
January’s flavors-of-the-month will include Banana Bailey’s Chocolate and Kahúla Caramel, plus more. (Hint: (December’s flavors were Strawberry Mint, Cinnamon Basil, Egg Nog, and Coconut Curry Chocolate.) Also, the Creamery is open to flavor suggestions for future monthly tastings. “I want to make what people want to eat,” said Sam.
Rather than expanding to store front, the Creamery has a different type of growth plan, focusing on expanding the social gathering aspect of the business model. “I want [the parties] to become something that people want to be involved in and have a good time at. I plan on adding additional desert makers, more outrageous performers and art installations. Hopefully it will get so big that we have to host it in different spaces every month,” he said.
Mini Empire pie ladies, meet El Capitan Creamery.
With three other ice cream options on the hill, I had to ask. Why ice cream, Sam?
“When I was about five years old my dad wanted to open an ice cream and cookie shop called ‘Captain Scoopies’ and have the mascot be a pirate-like Captain Hook with a scoop on his hand. I came up with a little song for him (yes, at five years old) that could have been the radio commercial. I love creating a little happiness in people’s lives and if ice cream is the way I’m meant to spread the love, then I’m going to follow the smiles.”
Awwww.
Ok… “Captain Scoopies” would’ve been an insanely awsome name!!! El Capitan is pretty good, but ‘Scoopies’?! That’s just golden.
-> Hipsters think we are going to pay $10 to get in the door TO TASTE ICE CREAM.
-> In the most SHIT economy of the past 80 years, we all have $10 to spare to hope to get in the door to take home A PINT OF ICE CREAM. For the math-impaired, that’s like THREE TIMES the price of Ben & Jerry’s and H-D.
-> Hipsters think that there is a “social gathering aspect” to the things they do. Hahahahaha!
-> “Hopefully [ice cream] will get so big that…” Hahahahahaha! That what? You’ll have a Lady GaGa or an M.I.A. instore?
-> Hipsters pair the terms “ice cream” and “venture” and further augment with “experimental” and (oh yeah, we know you HAAAAAATE IT – ironicironicironic) “boutique”.
What fucking lives are you people living, anyway? Are you SO BORED that all you want to do is sit around and EAT? Eat stuff that will make you fat and give you diabetes? (Right. Pot bellies are fashionable now, I forgot.) This is your generational statement? This is your fashion statement? I mean, are you SO BORED that you can’t sit at home or in a coffee shop or in a library and WRITE A BOOK? CREATE SOMETHING? Or is it that since daddy gave you a condo in a “funky neighborhood” that the world owes you staring at you in your lens-lacking eyeglasses while you EAT and call it fashion? Way to challenge your elders, kids. Way to go.
Not the lack of real information about the product here. Nothing interesting like how and from where the ingredients are sourced and why. No info about what this business plans to bring to and contribute to the community (note: BEING SEEN is not a contribution). Etc.
No thanks. Pure bullshit.
I totally agree. Captain Scoopies is awesome
“Hipsters think we are going to pay $10 to get in the door TO TASTE ICE CREAM.”
Who are these mythical monoculture of “hipsters”?
God, you sound like a ball of douchey rage, independent of whether there’s too many dessert shops or not. The dudes and dudettes working at Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc. and making the big bucks aren’t “hipsters”.
Some need to be led by their noses, because they are unable to or refuse to notice. You said it yourself – but what you described is a set of people who WORK for a living. Check out the ages and occupations of the people you find in these “boutiques” – terminally bored children with rich daddies; perhaps those working at the companies you mentioned. Try to rattle off a list of what these children are doing to form a community, trying to build, trying to create. (note: CREATING A SCENE is not an acceptable answer.)
Correct. Total douchey rage. Where “douchey rage” is, “angered by the losses of places that already had good local businesses in them being put out of business by jacked rents and stupid entities as these.” Where “douchey rage” is, “angered by getting forced out of an apartment only to have the very same four walls labelled as a condo for these children who go to Seattle Central (if they’re even doing anything at all) to own and live in and cook up things like AN ICE CREAM SCEEEEENE, MAN in their spare time.” Yeah, such a douche. And it is absolutely independent of the ice cream scene – spot on.
And it’s going on all over town, is it not? I mean, is it a secret? Bored of Belltown, let’s roll up The Hill and kill it. Bored of The Hill, let’s roll through and mess up Fremont. Bored of Fremont, let’s roll through and gut Ballard. Bored of Ballard, let’s bust down to Georgetown with our Mercedes and Audis. Bored of Georgetown, let’s go start to mess with Interbay and then south on Rainier and South Lk Union and Eastlake and and and and … oops, the money for all of it ran out. And check out the empty condos and storefronts everywhere were there once were living, breathing neighborhoods. Hole where Ballard Denny’s was. New hole where Sunset Bowl was. Parking lot where Twice Sold Tales was. “Bistrot” where Still Life Cafe was. Fremont PCC relocated into some brushed-metal bullshit a block away. Empty condos where the Wonder Bread factory was. La Panzanella no longer has a cafe. Wine bars everywhere. Death by tapas and bullshit. Recognize any of this? It’s not that change is bad, don’t misunderstand me, but it’s this change to a, “permanent temporary-ness” with these folks who have money and their replicants that move from one thing to another and gut everything with their short attention spans leaving NOTHING for anyone to do or enjoy in its wake.
Yeah?
You sound like a goddamn crazy person. Learn to organize your thoughts and people might take you more seriously.
Please keep it cool. I’m leaving this stuff up because I think it *could* be an interesting discussion. But tone down the vitriol please.
@defendcapitolhill
what have you done?
you rail against hipsters and then devolve into some weird diatribe referencing development and tapas/wine bars. i’m missing any logic you might have going.
according to your argument anything new is hipster driven; yet you claim they do nothing all day but wander boutiques and hang-out in over-priced condos. oh, and eat; which, doesn’t everyone do that? doesn’t everyone eat? so what’s the big deal with someone starting a business around that simple act?
i’ll ask you, what have you done? what have you created? in what ways have you helped save the “old seattle” that’s supposedly being replaced by these hipsters you are raging about? i will wager that the answer is nothing.
you have every right to your opinion that the business model of social ice cream is ignorant. but when you turn it into a rant similar to that of a street-corner loony, who’s gone off his meds and is one wrong look away from gunning people down, then it’s hard to take you seriously.