The Frappe Machine is Broken
Presented by In The Weeds
By Elle Jarvis
I’ve worked in the hospitality industry in some capacity for 62% of my life. Of all the hats worn floating between the front of house, back of house, private cheffing, party planning, brand consulting, general managing, the hardest – hands down – has been ice cream scooping. Weird things happen to your body when you’re fourteen years old, the legal minimum age to work in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Couple hormonal physical changes with having half your body inside a sticky freezer for 6 hours straight, it’s a frozen recipe for an existential crisis before you even can comprehend what an existential crisis is.
Scooping ice cream in a seaside town is a lot like bartending in a high-volume nightclub. The line never ends and when people arrive to get what they’ve been not so patiently waiting for, they shout an order at you if you are so lucky that they took their time to decide what they want. They then throw you a bunch of crumpled up soggy dollar bills and you likely will never remember their face again.
My very first work meltdown was at 6:48 pm on the Fourth of July at the little scoop shop aptly named Sands End Café. After scooping for four hours non-stop in anticipation of the village’s Independence Day bonfire and fireworks without a bathroom break, a sip of water, or god forbid some food to nourish my growing body, we ran out of Moose Tracks. I was the smallest on staff at the time and as such, constantly tasked to crawl into the basement in which we called “The Scary Space” to grab a backup. Covered in cobwebs and dust, I searched tub after tub for our top seller only to yell to myself, “who the fuck would put the Butter Pecan and Maple Walnut flavors in front of Moose Tracks and Mint Chip?” I guess you could say I also understood emotional intelligence before I had the agency to speak a language other than soft serve and strawberry dip.
Upon arriving back in the daylight, it felt as though the line had tripled in size. The energy of the village was exploding, and so was I. My first trip to cry in the walk-in culminated with the boy I had a crush on popping his head in the window and ordering a frappe, which I ended up wearing when the machine seized and physically exploded. The owner, and perhaps my first mentor, witnessing my eyes welling from sheer exhaustion was surprised I was actually hydrated enough to produce tears. They handed me a wet side towel and directed me to the walk-in, “go scream it out, I got the window.”
These days, I wear a very different hat, that of the Founder of In The Weeds, a national 501c3 public charity that champions the physical, financial, and mental health of the hospitality professional. We’ve built our own table to amplify the voices of our homies in hospitality to build a new hospitality culture that creates an inclusionary, sustainable, and safe industry for the people who power it.
If it weren’t for the empathy of my manager or the $200 in sticky dollar bills and the cold slice of pizza in my backpack as I rode my bike home from work that night, that experience could have been the end of my colorful career in this industry. I didn’t retire from food and beverage that summer, but the frappe machine sure as shit was out of order until we collectively celebrated Labor Day.
In The Weeds is a National 501c3 public charity that Champions the Physical, Financial + Mental Health of the Hospitality Professional. It is the vision of In The Weeds to create a safe, inclusionary + sustainable hospitality industry for the people who power it.
Woman smiling in front of produce
She / Her / Hers Elle Jarvis is the Founder of In The Weeds, Inc a national 501c3 public charity that Champions the Physical, Financial + Mental Health of the Hospitality Professional. When not wearing her activism hat, Elle owns and operates H Cole Club a Boutique Brand that curates New England Goods and Experiences with Thought, Intention and Care - By The Sea Shore.
Opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of Best Served. To achieve our mission of bringing more voices to the table, we are committed to sharing a variety of viewpoints across the industry.
