Letters to the Editor July 5th, 2011
WHAT IT IS ABOUT CORVALLIS
I’ve lived here for a year now and think I have finally figured out what it is about Corvallis. You can walk around with your heart chakra open and not get slammed. And you pass people on the sidewalk doing the same thing. I’ve lived in many places in this world and this is the only place I’ve seen where you can do it. I love this town. I don’t own a car and it’s also very bike and pedestrian friendly.
-Cynthia
SOUPLESSONS
SoupCycle is a Portland/Corvallis small business that delivers homemade soup, salads, and bread to subscribers (we call them SoupScribers) at your homes or offices. Jed Lazar, SoupCycle owner and one of the 5 Portland delivery people, shares some observations about life on the road as a SoupCyclist.
SoupCycle has made 35,526 bicycle soup deliveries to 546 Souptarians in Portland and Corvallis. Here are 10 lessons I’ve learned delivering soup by bicycle to our customers:
Lesson #1) Have a repertoire of soupy puns on hand at all times. Because what would a customer rather buy– “three bean soup” or “Won’t You Bean My Neighbor”? Would your customers rather live in the “SoupCycle delivery area” or “The Kingdom of Souplandistan”?
Lesson #2) Pulling a soup trailer as big as ours are, be prepared for kids to point and stare.
Lesson #3) Pulling a soup trailer this big, be prepared for adults to point and stare—but that’s OK. Hopefully, it will be memorable enough that they will remember to check out our website (www.soupcycle.com) when they get home.
Lesson #4) Many of Portland’s homeless ride bikes with trailers. Before we had big signs on our trailers, I was mistaken for a homeless person—a driver pulled up next to me, rolled down the window, and offered me his bottles to recycle. I politely declined and offered him some tasty organic soup instead.
Lesson #5) People in Portland and Corvallis react one way when you tell them about SoupCycle; people from other places react another way. People from Corvallis/Portland will say “Great idea! What’s the website?” People from outside our cities will nod, wonder how to respond for a few seconds, and then ask “So, what’s your other job?”
Lesson #6) Own good rain gear.
Lesson #7) Own good snow gear. We deliver every week of the year, by bike.
Lesson #8) You can trust Oregonians. There’s no way to lock our trailer with soup coolers. We leave the trailer unattended and unlocked every time we deliver to a building downtown. In the nearly 4 years we’ve been in business, no one has ever opened up the trailer or taken any soup.
Lesson #9) Customers won’t always tell you when you’re doing something wrong, but they’ll always tell you when you’re doing something right. One of our customers who is a vegetarian and works at the Oregon Zoo told me that if she found out our salad dressing was made of baby seal oil, she’d still eat it.
Lesson #10) If you want to start a successful company, start one that makes it easy for people to feel good about the choices they make.
-Kim Thackray, Corvallis manager of SoupCycle
