As the monumental 2020 presidential election comes to a close, one small business in the Middle Tennessee area is capitalizing on the current state of the country.
Golly G’s Ice Cream Shop in Clarksville began their inaugural “Candidate Cookie Poll” last Friday, Oct. 30. Store owner Joey Boykin claims to have implemented the idea from a bakery in Pennsylvania who has ran the promotion for the previous four elections.
“Our customers continue to amaze us,” Boykin said. “We try to be creative in the things that we do and offer. Whatever we do, we try to do it with excellence. Those cookies are delicious, the names that are on them are just for fun. The star is the cookie. It’s fun for our customers to feel like they’re supporting one candidate or another one just based on the cookie [that] they’re eating.”
The shop has seen tremendous success from the event. According to the store’s Facebook page, their sales have exceeded 750 Joe Biden and Donald Trump-themed cookies before the final votes were tallied. Monday’s comparison noted 576 purchases for Trump as opposed to 192 for Biden.
PHOTO SUBMITTED FROM GOLLY G’S
Megan Joosse – an employee at the Madison location and a junior at APSU – was not taken aback by the overwhelmingly republican sales throughout the poll.
“I just think it was going to be indicative of how Tennessee was going to vote anyways,” she said. “I think the people who are going to vote kind of had that mindset anyway.”
Boykin aimed to promote joy through the promotion, and hopes to have resonated such throughout the store’s three separate locations in the middle Tennessee area.
“Fun is one of our core values,” he added. “Every decision that we make, we make sure we infuse our core values in it. Fun is just part of who we are as a corporation, as a business, as an organization. We sell ice cream and cookies, how could you not have fun doing that?
“This is obviously a serious thing. People are emotionally involved in politics, but if we can’t have fun in these things that are of most importance in our culture, I think that’s a sad statement of where we are as a country.”
The company is encouraged by the turnout in their first poll and plans on allowing customers to “vote with their stomach” throughout different events in the future.
