- Michael Gebert
- Nick Spencer at Spencer’s Jolly Posh Foods
“You can tell what popular culture Americans have been exposed to by what foods they ask for in the shop,” says Nick Spencer of Spencer’s Jolly Posh Foods, 3755 N. Southport. “If they’ve seen Wallace and Gromit, they want Wensleydale. If they watch Doctor Who, they ask for Jammie Dodgers.” I’ve just introduced him to another one: my kids play the computer game Minecraft (think Legos on a screen) and watch a series of Minecraft vidcasts from the UK, the commentary on which introduced them to Jaffa Cakes, a brand of thin little sponge cakes smeared with orange jam and covered with chocolate. He has them right on the shelf opposite us (though Jammie Dodgers are either out of stock or possibly in another dimension just at the moment).
Of his early naivete about the business Spencer says, “I figured, you make a product, you get it into Jewel and all the shops, and by the end of the year you’re a millionaire, that’s the plan, isn’t it?” Instead he put in long hours handing out samples of his meats to shoppers at farmers’ markets and serving the meats on sandwiches. The business did grow, slowly, and he opened a shop in 2012, filling it out with other imported items from Britain and Ireland. He added a small cafe on the side a year later.
Spencer’s Jolly Posh, 3755 N. Southport, 872-802-3840, jollyposh.com
