My Horrible Addiction

Which Threatens to Be My Undoing

This is hard.  It’s hard to face your own demons, especially in a public forum like this, where everything you say can be picked apart and magnified.  But I need to do this.  I need to confess this and get it off my chest.  You see, I have this addiction which threatens to doom me to financial ruin.  My addiction: Reese’s Ice Cream Cups.

For a second there, you thought this was going to be a serious blog, huh?  Well, in my case this IS serious.  You see, I own and operate an ice cream business.  Okay, when I say something like that it MIGHT conjure up images of me as the Willy Wonka of ice cream, with a crazy factory in which Oompa Loompas slow churn ice cream to frozen perfection.  That’s not it at all (Oompa Loompas have unionized as it turns out, those fuckers are pretty expensive these days).  It’s a push cart.  Yeah yeah… I get it all the time… “you’re the first white boy I’ve ever seen with one of those.”  I think, actually, I get that response here because of my proximity to Mexico.  But it’s awesome, and it’s mine.  And I have a sweet gig with the town’s Parks and Rec department which lets me sell at baseball games, at the city pool, and at pretty much every major event in town including the upcoming Independence Day festivities.  So, yeah, I dig my little cart… it pays the bills…

Que vende? Paletas! Paletas! Paletas! My Spanish speaking followers loved that reference.

…Unless I Eat All My Fucking Product!

I just started carrying the Reese’s Ice Cream Cups, and dear God I need help.  I already have a bit of a Reese’s addiction.  And by “bit of a Reese’s addiction,” I mean at a certain point in my life when I was working for a certain retail chain as a store assistant manager… I MAY have written off a few Reese’s Easter Eggs the fucking DAY after Easter as being past their expiration date… and I MAY have taken those same Reese’s Eggs home and devoured them in an orgy of peanut butter indulgence.  And by “may,” I mean “totally did”.  And by “a few,” I mean “several.”  Don’t judge me.

The point is, I REALLY can’t be trusted around this sexy beast:

God damn you! NO! Sorry! I didn’t mean it. Come here. It’s okay… It’s okay…

There’s two HUGE issues at play here.  1) My regular ice cream distributor doesn’t offer Good Humor products, so I had to go OUTSIDE of my supplier and am paying damn near retail in order to stock these things.  2)  Not only am I not getting a good deal on them, I have to drive quite a ways to get them… almost twice as far as I usually drive to get ice cream from my distributor.  I mean, I make the trip worth my while.  I pepper in some other ice creams into the order.  But, for me, it’s all about getting my hands on these babies.  Which means it’s REALLY about me feeding my addiction.  Which means, in the end, I’m not going to ever turn a profit on this product.

What to DO…

Now, I’m sure SOME of you out there are thinking, “Geez, Todd, just stop selling them, and go to the store whenever you have a craving for them.”  How about no, and also, go fuck yourself!  Wow.  Okay see, that’s not me speaking.  That’s the addiction.  Sorry.  Seriously.  But, you see, several people DO buy them from me, and therefore people will EXPECT me to have them in my cart, and if I just stop carrying them that makes me the insensitive asshole, now doesn’t it.  DOESN’T IT!  (Seriously… Doesn’t it?)

And it really isn’t fair to make me choose between my business and my love for Reese’s.  Especially when this may very well be the PINNACLE of Reese’s confectionery perfection.  I.  Shit. You.  Not.  Don’t believe me?  Read how the good people of Reese’s Inc. (okay, so they’re owned by Hershey’s … whatever) describe this masterpiece:

Rich peanut butter ice cream swirled with real Reese’s peanut butter, dipped in a milk chocolate shell.  This is the best product we’ve ever created, and you might achieve sexual climax when you bite into this piece of utter awesomeness.

Okay, the last part I added.  But they WOULD have said that if it wasn’t taboo to put the words “sexual climax” on a food product. But let’s be honest.  It hasn’t exactly been all winners coming out of the Reese’s camp lately.  Take a look at the current product line and see what I mean.

 

See?  I mean the bottom three are strong contenders, but the top four are busts.  Now, even I’ll readily admit that this is nowhere NEAR the complete Reese’s line of products, because they lend their peanut buttery name to WIDE range of foodstuffs.  And, frankly, that may be a bit of a problem.  Because unless it’s something familiar, like the Pieces, or the classic cup, or even the Big Cup, you really are never sure what you’re getting into when you taste something with the Reese’s name on it.  But, in the case of these ice creams, they got it right.

They Got It SO Right…

So what’s a paletero to do?  Keep getting a product which I’m barely scraping a profit out of when I sell it… which I usually DON’T sell it… because I end up scarfing them all down?  Or stop carrying my beloved peanut butter babies and removing them from my price list.

The decision has been difficult, but in the end I’ve decided to only make one more order of them and call it quits.  Seriously.  I’m putting an end to carrying this product in my cart.  I am a bit concerned that this won’t really be the end of my addiction, because I can simply go to the local convenience store and buy them (at exactly TWICE the price I was getting them).  But I’m going to try.  Because, frankly, I have a problem.  And the first step is admitting that you have a problem (to be fair, I have no idea what the other 11 steps of quitting ice cream addiction are… but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it).