The 901 Scoop

The 901 Scoop
3536 Walker Ave
901) 421-5519

I took my mom and the monkeys (Satchel, 15 and Jiro, 13) to Sushi Jimmi for dinner. (More on that later.) The topic of rolled ice cream came up, thanks to my recent (negative) review of Rollin Sweets. Satchel had no idea what we were talking about since he didn't go or read my review, so Jiro busted out a YouTube video. I mentioned that I heard a second rolled ice cream place opened yesterday over by the U of M. One thing led to another and we decided to go check it out, just for comparison's sake.

I can truly say now that Rollin Sweets wasn't bad, rolled ice cream is just dumb. I don't care if that makes me sound like an old lady.

When we walked into The 901 Scoop, the first thing I was looking for was how many people in the store were actually eating and how many employees were actually rolling. There were only a handful eating and two gals rolling.



What The 901 Scoop has going for it, is that they have several things you can order and get right away -- cookies, premade ice cream, sno cones, and coffee. The owner was also behind the counter doing his best to let us know how it all worked and what our options were.

There were 14 cups ahead of us--that's 14 orders of $6.50 rolled ice cream--which the owner clocked at a 30 minute wait.



He said it took about six minutes per order. So let's do some math--two girls making seven each at six minutes per order, that's actually about a 42 minute wait. I had already promised Jiro we wouldn't wait, so the rolled ice cream was out.

Can we go back to my Rollin Sweets review for a second? You know the one where I clocked the gal making them at 3.5 minutes and I padded the entire exchange to 5 minutes? Well that girl was working her ass off. The girls at The 901 Scoop, not so much. They pretty much looked like they were hating life and there was no pep in their step, so to speak. One of them was spending a lot of extra time cutting off the edges of the ice cream so it was perfectly square before she rolled it. The other one was just looking pouty. I watched for awhile and only saw one finished product which was not pretty. Rollin Sweets at least had a good looking final product.



I don't see how any business could last long term with just this concept.

Satchel ended up getting a Tiger Blood sno cone. The owner was trying to sell him on a Jolly Rancher sno cone with ice cream and whatnot which sounded good, but Satchel went old school. Jiro wanted a scoop of salted caramel in a waffle cone, but they were out of waffle cones (on Day 2). I was going to try what was billed as a candy bar taco, but it also required a waffle cone, so I went with a scoop of mint chocolate chip. My mom was mystified and passed on ordering anything. Our total was $9.33.



Zzzzzzz...

There was nowhere to sit, so the monkeys shared a piano bench. Not sure why a piano is taking up prime real estate here, but ok.



The end.