Sideshow Gelato combines sweets, magicians and sword swallowers in chef's dream shop
The economic changes of the past few years have found more workers requesting roles that help them develop their skills and their career. To lure the perfect employee, businesses are moving toward creative recruitment practices and benefits that help them plan for the future.
Jay Bliznick is no different, offering prospective employees a chance at on-the-job training, mentorship from established employees and sweet perks. To join Bliznick’s team you must go through a recruitment process that consists of sending headshots and a portfolio, a conversation with a panel of current employees, and a full stage performance. That’s because, for the past few weeks, Bliznick has been looking for magicians to entertain customers at his gelato shop.
Sideshow Gelato opened its carnival tent-inspired halls in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood in Spring of 2023 with a unique proposition: have some artisanal gelato and have some fun. Bliznick spent time as an executive chef before falling in love with gelato in Italy and deciding to focus on making the best treats stateside that he could. With an emphasis on top quality food experiences, you can find quirky homemade flavors like blood orange with black licorice, blue raspberry with mascarpone and gummy worms, and Nutella with pretzels and marshmallow, as well as dairy-free oat milk versions.
The Coney Island atmosphere of the gelato shop comes complete with a mini museum of oddities and roaming free-spirited performers. While the circus stripes and carnival ride cars feel like a circus throwback, the friends you might make here are anything but traditional. This is somewhat a reflection of Bliznick himself, with roots in vaudeville, including his father, a ventriloquist. While he’s well versed in looking for food service skills and sanitation certificates, hiring for this place requires something more. The contract and pay scale are different from what you might find in a more traditional job since performers crave flexibility and a living wage as much as stage time. Producing regular shows with a variety of riveting acts can be costly and laborious too. The current roster of Sideshow Gelato is contortionists, jugglers, sword swallowers and balloon artists, along with a handful of young scoopers anxious to hone their crafts with mentorship from full-time performers.
“It’s turned out to be more important to have them be good performers,” he says of searching for scoopers. His staffing model encourages the young gelato slingers to rotate into the sideshow with aid from the experts who regularly own the stage. If you’re a young performer trying to get better, there aren’t many chances to get in front of an audience like this, with most stages at bars or venues that won’t admit teens.
This top-tier frozen snack has attracted fans from as far as Las Vegas, specifically patron saint of magic (and one half of the Fool Us duo) Penn Jillette, who became a financial backer of the shop after hearing the mission statement from Bliznick. He cites mentorship for young magic hopefuls as just one reason why he’s a fan. “It's kind of odd because it throws the two things you'd be doing at 17 years old together,” says Jillette. The other reason is the vegan gelato.
What Bliznick aims to offer is a day job with the benefit of community and a plan to advance. Make no mistake, it is a day job. “There’s customer service as well,” he elaborates, “You're going to have to change toilet paper or help clean up a kid’s vomit.” But beyond the usual grunt work that comes with a job at an ice cream shop, there’s juggling, stage tricks and a roster of traveling performers to learn from.
“Come to an ice cream shop and watch people stick swords down their throats,” is his elevator pitch to both prospective employees and visitors.
To make sure the perfect hire didn’t pull a disappearing act, Bliznick set up a recruitment process with a panel of current performers, ensuring the magicians met their possible colleagues for a culture fit. The process culminated in a full day of auditions in front of customers to see how each prospect would handle a live show. To match the staff and atmosphere of the shop, Bliznick wanted a variety of illusionists from varied backgrounds and types of acts. Even early in the recruitment process, Bliznick left the mission flexible: how many performers and what the contract would stipulate would need to be malleable to work with the right performer. If they had to travel for big opportunities, there would need to be backup.
His final lineup: a well-known female performer with humorous edge, a magician with a hint of Roberto Benigni charm, and a “top hat and tails” magician with a classic act. All performers offer something different and equally interesting, and, he hopes, will inspire a generation of illusionists that look different than the ones before.
Bliznick thinks back to Jillette’s visit to the shop, and while he was certainly starstruck, his staff and visitors had more in common with Moxie, the eldest child of Jillette, a performer who came along to see the shows. “When Moxie walks into Sideshow Gelato, they get to share the space with people who are like them,” Jillette specifies.
Building a team that influences a new generation is a key endeavor that makes Sideshow Gelato an attractive employment option against other venues where stage time is 21+. For performers who are new to the community, stage time is imperative to growth: like many other careers, the more time on stage, the more you learn what differentiates you from others. Bliznick’s pursuit is to give those young scoopers as much time as possible, with no qualms about losing performers after they grow under his roof, saying, “I'd prefer not to keep people around. You can grow here, and when you've learned everything here, you can move on.”
In the end, Bliznick and his staff couldn’t just choose one magical applicant. Added to the Sideshow Gelato roster will be performer Andrea Solimbergo, who Bliznick calls a perfect personification of the gelato shop, an Italian living in Chicago who does a charming stage illusion show. Witty Rebecca Spectre will bring her comedic act to select shows, too.
The hope is that these new performers will build a rapport with audiences and lure in new fans with word-of-mouth reviews. The plan is for the magicians to mentor the staff. However, with the new lead magician splitting hours between illusion and a full-time job, and a backup performer with a full roster of shows, it will be up to Bliznick to manage the balancing act of keeping a food business profitable while providing a wage that keeps employees retained and offers advancement. And in that way, Sideshow Gelato is not too different from other businesses.
Of course, for Bliznick, other goals lay heavy on his mind: “First of all, I hope they like the gelato. It's really good gelato.”
