See this story at BrooklynDaily.com.
By Danielle Furfaro
Brooklyn Daily
This beardo’s mason jar is bubbling over.
Not content to bring bacon soup only to the people of Williamsburg, Shane McGarvey has rented a commercial kitchen in Bedford-Stuyvesant and partnered with an online food seller to bring hid delectable soups to the rest of the borough.
McGarvey started out making a variety of soups in his Williamsburg apartment, then personally delivering them in recyclable quart-sized mason jars. His most popular soups use bacon as a key ingredient, and after his small business saw a surge in customers this spring, he rented the shared commercial kitchen and expanded his deliveries to Park Slope.
McGarvey became infamous around Brooklyn in April thanks to a Brooklyn Paper story that quickly went viral — mostly with the help of detractors who saw him as a veritable poster boy of hipsterism.
The soupman embraced his sudden internet fame, linking to the story in all of his company e-mails.
“I’m thinking of changing the company name to embrace some of those comments,” McGarvey said. “I wanted my tagline to be ‘Go back to Maine, beardo’.”
This week, he made an agreement with Good Eggs, a San Francisco-based company that will help him distribute throughout Brooklyn starting this summer.
“We loved Shane’s product and he sources a lot of his ingredients locally, so it’s a good fit,” said Good Eggs founding farmer Josh Morgenthau.
Until Good Eggs gets its distribution up and running in Brooklyn, McGarvey is still in charge of his own deliveries. And since he refuses to ditch the heavy recyclable mason jars, he’s now considering a soup-ed up bike.
“I’ve talked to some bike manufacturers about building me a tricycle with a locking cooler,” said McGarvey, 39.
McGarvey attributes his success on his stellar soup-making methods.
“Anyone can put stock in a pot and add vegetables and call it soup,” he said. “It’s another thing to slow cook a pig’s neck.”
Reach reporter Danielle Furfaro at dfurfaro@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-2511. Follow her at twitter.com/DanielleFurfaro.