Birdhouse Gelato plans to close, and the owner cites a financial issue: Their layoff at the hands of DOGE
DOGE eliminated Aspen Simone's day job, which was helping to support the fledgling Birdhouse Gelato. The situation is ironic, as Simone worked for a government-efficiency agency.
Birdhouse Gelato in Bella Vista will shut down soon — and owner Aspen Simone cites the elimination of their day job under orders of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Without that paycheck, Simone no longer can support Birdhouse, which opened in January in the same storefront as the Underbite Bites, a bakery. Many entrepreneurs work other jobs while bootstrapping new ventures. “The numbers worked in that context,” Simone, 36, told The Inquirer. “I had a little bit of extra income, and I was able to pay somebody to be here when I wasn’t. [After the layoff], I couldn’t make the numbers work.”
Customers, meanwhile, have been flocking to Birdhouse for distinctive flavors, such as the chai-like pasticceria Siciliana, a heady combination of roasted barley, cardamom, citrus peel, and cinnamon, and the stracciatella, brimming with house-made dark chocolate chips. Last week, the shop was included in an Inquirer map of the region’s best ice cream shops.
Birdhouse’s gelato may be rich, but so is the irony here: Simone was a technology consultant with 18F, an agency within the General Services Administration that helped other federal agencies improve their digital services. “We did government-efficiency work before it was a buzzword,” Simone said.
Simone’s last days at Birdhouse, 806 S. Sixth St., will be Aug. 1 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Aug. 2 from 2 to 7 p.m. They also will offer discounts. Simone will continue their weekend Philly Pigeon Tours through the Italian Market, which explore the relationship between pigeons and humans.
The Underbite Bites will remain open. “We were technically two businesses operating collaboratively, and just the gelato part is going away,” Simone said.
Asked if Birdhouse could return some day, Simone said: “I haven’t decided. There’s a lot of math and other things to figure out before I can really be sure either way.”