Unless you’ve been submerged in the bowels of Noyce for too long, chances are you’ve heard of Golden Dick. The late-night omelette delivery service has achieved astonishing success on campus, appealing to both our humor and our stomachs. This semester the founders of Golden Dick, Jack Muskopf ’16 and Reggie Sackey-Addo ’16, have left to study abroad in Europe, but the enterprise continues under the leadership of Keanan Gleason ’18, Kevin Anderson ’18 and Sam Sokolsky ’17.
The creation of Golden Dick stems back to late-night walks last year between Muskopf and Sackey-Addo. Friends and roommates, the pair would often end a night by wandering off to Kum-and-Go to buy Tornados.
“We thought about how it would be really nice to have some sort of awesome food delivery service. We had heard about some people doing pizza at some college in Ohio … so we thought we could do something similar at Grinnell,” Muskopf recalled.
Throughout the summer, the two continued to develop their idea for a campus-wide food delivery service and eventually, due to their own personal tastes, decided to center their business on omelettes. As for the name, the provocative title originates from another passion of Muskopf’s: rapping.
“Over the summer, I was thinking about becoming a rapper, and that’s still in the works by the way, but, yeah, I thought Golden Dick would be a good name for a rapper. Or at least a rap album or something,” Muskopf said.
Partly for marketing and partly just for fun, Sakey-Addo and Muskopf decided to introduce Grinnell to Golden Dick through a party. The two friends covered campus with posters entitled “Who is Golden Dick?” many in foreign languages, followed by a public invitation to Cleveland lounge on a Friday night.
“We knew when we started this business that we wanted to use some of the money to throw parties on campus,” Muskopf said. Golden Dick sponsored several parties on campus last semester, including a 10/10 pregame and one known as “Sunshine Love.”
A jovial, laid-back attitude is a fundamental part of the culture of Golden Dick, and Muskopf believes that their pledge to use profits to throw parties for the Grinnell community is a unique part of their mission.
“It’s a small campus, you know, you’re close to the same people all the time. It’s really nice to sell food to these people, and then give back to them for free and have fun with them at the same time,” Muskopf said.
This semester, another inspired group of students will run Golden Dick. Gleason, Anderson and Sokolsky plan to try to extend the success and excitement that the organization fostered in its first semester. Although the trio holds open the possibility of experimenting with recipes, they don’t want to make any serious adjustments to the business.
“Basically, we’re keeping the business the same, we’re not going to change that much … whatever they were doing people really liked, so we’re going to try to keep it that way,” Gleason said.
On Monday, a couple of hours before the group initiated their first night at Golden Dick, Gleason admitted that he was a bit nervous, but the next day told The S&B that he was “pleasantly surprised” with how the operation went. Muskopf, who had also heard about the night, was optimistic about the prospects of the new managers. Based on their performance the first night, he believes they will be successful.
When Sackey-Addo and Muskopf return in the fall, they plan to take back Golden Dick, possibly running it from their house off campus. As seniors, however, the pair’s time running the operation is limited. For his part, Muskopf hopes that Golden Dick will live on as a part of Grinnell.
“I think Golden Dick is a living thing, which is not me or Reggie, or those guys. I’m not sure if it has any physical manifestation … I’m not sure if she is human,” Muskopf proclaimed, adding, “Would I say she is a god? Yes. But that’s not to say she was someone who is created, she was someone who was met.”
