Well, I woke up about eleven hours ago, and I’ve still got hundreds of charts to examine. I also feel I’ve kind of done my bit for king & country today, and regular readers have a good sense as to what I think the market is going to do next, so maybe I’ll spare myself the task of another trading post and talk about something wholly unactionable: the latest store to open on University Avenue (which is kind of our Rodeo Drive).
It’s called Cream, and their principal product is custom-made ice cream sandwiches. You walk in, look at the dozen kinds of cookies they have, pick a pair of those, then pick an ice cream, and – smush – they assemble it for you. It only opened a week ago, and I went in to check it out and maybe get one, but I quickly computed one of those little sandwiches was probably about 1000 calories and easily 70 grams of fat, so, errrr, I decided against it (yeah, I’m a lot of fun to be around).
A couple of things stood out for me. First of all, the price: it’s only $2.50. Go anywhere else up and
down the street and try to buy a single cookie, or a scoop of ice cream, and that’s going to be $4 at least. So how they put together $12 of product into a $2.50 item is a mystery to me. The other thing, which I guess isn’t too surprising considering the novelty of the store and the low price, is that the place is freakin’ jammed. There was a line down the street last night, and today it wasn’t much shorter.
I’ve got a funny feeling this place, cool as it is, won’t be around in a couple of years – – at least at this location. You have to sell a hell of a lot of ice cream sandwiches to cover the rent, and I think once the novelty wears off – – and the pounds start to accumulate around waistlines – – those long lines are going to disappear.
All the same, it beats the hell out of another Subway or Starbucks. I’ll have to give it a try. Just not now.
See you in the morning. Pray for rain.
