Birdhouse Gelato opens January 18th!
Hello! This is Aspen, writing to let you know that Birdhouse Gelato and The Underbite Bites are opening really soon.
Our first day will be Saturday, January 18th, and we’ll also be open on Sunday the 19th.
We don’t yet have the opening hours decided, but we expect it will be something like 1 pm to 8 pm our first weekend. We’ll send an update once we know for sure, and we’ll keep the Google Maps listing updated.
Going forward, we expect to be open 11 am to 8 pm, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. If all goes well, we will be open more days, and later into the evenings.
Thank you
I also just want to thank you for signing up for this email list. It means a lot to me that you wanted to be notified when we open, and I’m looking forward to meeting you when you come into the shop.
What Birdhouse Gelato is all about
For me, Birdhouse is an experiment in living my values. The challenge I’ve given myself is: can I run a business that prioritizes the well-being of people, animals, and environment?
I’ve long been inspired by the challenge that Paul Hawken gave in his 2009 commencement speech:
You are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation... but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement.
Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.
Someone recently introduced me to the idea that commerce and capitalism are different things. To oversimplify it, commerce is the business of daily life in which people relate and trade and sustain themselves, whereas capitalism is an economic system that incentivizes accumulation of personal profit over just about everything else.
At Birdhouse Gelato, we’re trying to do commerce without capitalism. We want a world in which our economy is fundamentally compatible with a livable planet and happy people. Through the shop, we’re attempting to live out an answer to the question: Can we meet our human needs while treating the people, animals, and environments we relate to as well as we can?
So, thanks for being a part of this journey with us.
(By the way, this is both my first ever business, and it’s a side project that I’m doing in addition to my full-time job. I expect to make a bunch of mistakes, especially this first little while. I appreciate any patience and kindness you can provide while I get through this early learning experience.)
Partnering with The Underbite Bites
Birdhouse Gelato shares a space with The Underbite Bites, a bakery that used to operate out of The Chilly Banana just a couple blocks down Passyunk Ave. I met Rae, who runs The Underbite Bites, for the first time this spring. We had a few conversations, discovered we shared a lot of values, and realized we would make great business partners.
And just to let you know, Rae’s baked goods are really good. I’m not saying this for marketing purposes, it’s genuinely how I feel about her baking. Her cakes are among the best I’ve ever eaten.
Respecting your inbox
It’s really important to me to respect your inbox, because that’s your time and attention. I do understand why businesses repeatedly email people, but I’m personally tired of the practice, and it’s important to me not to do that.
My plan is to send you just two more emails: one when we decide on our opening hours, and one the day we open just as a last reminder.
If we have to postpone the opening for any reason, obviously we’ll send those updates as well.
If I ever decide to write a recurring newsletter, I may send one more email to this list inviting you to join, but I’m not going to automatically sign you up for it.
But then that will be it. I’m not going to copy your emails into a bigger marketing list or anything like that.
In conclusion
Thank you for caring about when we open, for reading this email, and for being part of creating the world I think most of us want to see. I’m looking forward to meeting you when we open.
See you soon, and be well
~ Aspen