Pope Gets Official Milkshake Flavor in Sham of a Vote
Official milkshake | Matt Rourke, AP. Pope Francis, Shutterstock.com
Pope Francis’ visit to Philadelphia is just under 200 days away, and the important decisions are starting to be made: The official milkshake of the Pope’s visit to Philadelphia has been chosen. Alleluia!
The milkshake bringing all the altar boys to the yard is a combination of vanilla ice cream and shortbread butter cookies and is named #PopeinPhilly. The $3.90 shake will be available at Philly’s Potbelly locations from April 1st to to September 30th. Fifty cents of each sale will go to the World Meeting of Families.
The #PopeinPhilly shake was chosen yesterday by students from St. Peter the Apostle School at an event at the Potbelly in Center City. It defeated a crumbled Oreo shake (called World Meeting Mashup) and a banana, chocolate and peanut butter shake (PHL Liberty Bell) for the win. Or did it? Read on and you’ll see this vote was no vote at all!
The Inquirer’s Julia Terruso reports:
[Italian bishop Vincenzo] Paglia tasted three milkshakes with Donna Crilley Farrell, Executive Director of the World Meeting of Families. Then they both deferred to the kids, not knowing the students had been served only one shake, #popeinphilly. That became the de facto winner.
Yes, yes: God works in mysterious ways. But come on! It sounds like the milkshake was chosen not by divine intervention or Catholic school students, but by someone in marketing at Potbelly. “I was kind of, like, weirded out by the idea but I mean, it benefited us because we got free milkshakes,” 13-year-old Mia Ortiz told the Inquirer.
@PagliaTW, "When I was a child, I loved ice cream. happiness is important" #PopeinPhilly pic.twitter.com/bRm7K5zVQs
— Darwin Paz (@WMOFDarwin) March 9, 2015
Farrell said more partnerships are in the works, so we can look forward to pope-corn, pope-sicles and chicken pope pie. (Unfortunately, it’s probably too late to get Irish pope-tatoes.)
Despite the weirdness of the #PopeinPhilly vote, four bucks for a milkshake sounds like a steal. Potbelly’s three Philly locations are on 17th between JFK and Market, 1 Convention Ave (Penn Tower) and 11th and Montgomery (Temple). They go on sale April 1st.
Follow @dhm on Twitter.