Sunday, March 21, 2010

New Bi-rite soft serve and Ice cream drama, Mission, SF.

The new Bi-rite soft serve window! :)

Left (mine): VANILLA! After going on about how I don't like most vanilla ice creams, I tried this one and ended up getting it! It's sooo lovely! I got the Bi-rite dark caramel sauce and toffee bits to go with it! Amazing combination, if I do say so myself. :)

Right: Vanilla with toffee bits and brownie. The brownie was okay, but not chocolaty enough for me. We both agreed mine was better. :)


So I got the scoop with Molly Moon's (the Bi-rite knock off in Seattle). It turns out that the Molly Moon's lady came down to Bi-rite and asked questions about the ice cream a few months before opening in Seattle. I guess she lacked to mention she was opening a shop in Seattle! Next thing they know, she stole the entire menu and opened Molly Moon's! That's pretty awful. It worked though because Bi-rite didn't have any copyrights. :(


Yelp

---------

Update! So Molly Moon wrote me and I feel a bit bad about how I presented this post. I would like to clarify that the information I presented in my post was from a conversation I had with two Bi-rite employees (who had just spoken with one of the owners). It really wasn't my intent to slander Molly Moon though. I think it's great that these wonderful flavors are in Seattle, I just think Bi-rite should get a bit of credit for some of the flavors/sundaes. Before writing what I did, I also went through some of the Molly Moon press and saw no mentions of Bi-rite, which was upsetting. I'm promise, I only wrote what I heard from these employees though, and again, just think Bi-rite deserves some credit here! If you're in Seattle though, you should certainly go to Molly Moon's for ice cream because they do have some yummy treats.. Bi-rite's Sam's Sundae is pretty great!

2 comments:

  1. I noticed remarkable similarities in the Molly Moon's menu as well. Not only are a number of the special flavors exactly the same (salted caramel, honey lavender, scout mint/mint chip, ginger), there are similarities in marketing (use of local ingredients, seasonal flavors). Even the chalk board installed at a lower height for kids is a direct ripoff. Bi-Rite has a right to be upset that elements of their store were so blantantly copied.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree with the previous post. Sorry, Molly, but if you're going to unabashedly copy the theme and flavors of a successful and original business in a different city and try to pass them off as your own, you could at least come up with a different name for Sam's Sundae. (If it hadn't been called the EXACT SAME THING as the sundae at Bi-Rite, I may have still entertained the possibility that you came up with it independently... or at least that both stores were capitalizing on an existing idea).

    ReplyDelete