I scream, you scream!
A small business and its love-hate relationship with food delivery companies.
By Sofia Arana | Freelance Reporter
Hailey Pudlick, a 20 year old college student from Saint Francis Minnesota, walked into the Big Dipper Creamery in Blaine at 2:30 p.m. to open it for the day. She was greeted by the plaques and signs dedicated to her grandmother’s generosity and kindness. The Big Dipper is famous within its community. Most people who walk in know them from the Blaine county fair, Andover family fun fest and from Blaine highschool events. The owner, Julie Guss works as a para at Blaine High School, caters a lot of their events and sponsors their football and baseball teams.
“With the Big Dipper being so involved in the community, it keeps us busy and gets our name out there,” Pudlick said.
The Big Dipper Creamery is a family-owned business that has been around for four generations. Pudlick is the fourth generation dedicated to keeping the legacy going. The first location was opened in Sarasota, Florida in 1990 by “Grandma Sharon.”
They keep their story on their wall in the Blaine Big Dipper:
“To keep the business in the family and to keep the recipes close to heart, her son Jerry and his wife Julie were inspired to open up a new shop in Blaine in 2003. They continued using high quality ingredients in every batch and treating every customer like family,” reads the plaque in the wall, “Their son Tyler found his passion for ice cream at a young age… and he opened up his own shop to continue the legacy.”
As Pudlick walked in she mentally went over her opening tasks.
- Turn on all the freezer lights.
- Make note of all the ice cream that is getting low.
- Restock spoons, napkins and cones.
- Check the delivery tablet.
The Big Dipper Creamery has been using food delivery companies to fill online orders since the start of the pandemic. Delivery companies helped keep the business alive during the COVID-19 pandemic. Aside from signing up for delivery services, they placed an ice cream vending machine outside both of their locations.
The Guss family is very thankful for those companies and the business it brought them.
But now that the pandemic has ended, delivery services aren’t as useful and important as it once was. The majority of the big dippers orders are placed in person. And they made more money from in-person orders in comparison to delivery orders.
On a normal day, the Big Dipper receives one to three mobile orders. On a busy day those orders can be the reason the line is out the door.
Recently, the Big Dipper has had a few issues with delivery companies and their respective support teams.
As a partner with multiple delivery services, they receive a tablet that receives the orders and allows them to confirm the order, get in touch with the customer and track the driver.
For these companies, it’s a very efficient system. But not for a small business like the Big Dipper. The main issue keeping it from being as efficient as possible is that they have a lot of issues with the tablet.
For two weeks straight the tablet wouldn’t turn on. But somehow they were still receiving and confirming orders.
For 14 days, the Big Dipper staff wouldn’t know if a delivery order was coming in until a driver arrived with an order summary. The employees would only start the order once the driver arrived, based on the order summary.
If they didn’t have the right flavor of ice cream to fill the order, they would have to ask the driver to call the customer and ask if they wanted a different flavor or if they wanted to cancel the order altogether.
“He was really nice, manually canceled the order and actually bought himself some ice cream on his way out.”- Elise Heckmann, worker
That is where the problems come up. Delivery drivers are timed, when they take longer it reflects poorly on them as well as the Big Dipper and their team.
Most of the drivers understand that some things are out of their control.
“There was one [driver] who was sent over by mistake even though the customer had already canceled the order,” employee Elise Heckmann said. “He was really nice, manually canceled the order and actually bought himself some ice cream on his way out.”
“Once the doors open, they stay open until closing.” — Grace Kennington, worker
Eventually, the company’s partner support team sent over a new tablet so the Big Dipper could receive orders as usual. But there are still the usual discomforts with them.
During the summer the line for ice cream is usually out the door. Customers stand in a single file line outside, wrapping around the building and covering up the entrance to Paul’s Barber Shop next door.
“The summers are kind of crazy, especially the last day of school. There is a crazy line of people that keeps adding on.” Employee Grace Kennington said. “Once the doors open, they stay open until closing.”
Normally, there are two to four employees working at a time so helping all the customers is easy. Adding a delivery order takes at least one employee off of the in-person customers.
Despite the issues of accidental delivery orders and tablets that don’t work, the eight staff members are grateful for the influx of customers for the Guss family-owned business.
