San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Psst! Wanna buy a cheesecake?
Scalping hits hotticket popups — no guarantee the goods are genuine
Food popups have become increasingly popular in the Bay Area, but what happens when a highdemand, limitedrun food is difficult to get? Apparently, a secondary market is created — where people falsely claim to sell versions of the region’s hottest popup foods.
Charles Chen knew his Japanesestyle Basque cheesecake popup, Basuku, was skyrocketing in popularity last year, but it wasn’t until he heard about a person buying a fake container of his frozen cheesecake batter that he knew the extent.
It was a brief yet confounding incident, he said. The food industry consultant, whose cheesecakes often sell out within minutes after he posts about them on his Instagram, said he posted an Instagram story about four months ago that mentioned he would possibly start selling frozen containers of his cheesecake mix. Before he had a chance to launch the venture, a woman messaged him online asking for directions on how to use the batter he had yet to start selling.
“She said a friend of hers had gotten it from someone else, who claimed it was Basuku batter,” Chen said with a laugh, noting that the original seller had somehow advertised it on social media. “I told her it wasn’t mine. But I had to ask if she baked it, and what it ended up being.”
The woman told him that fortunately it was a cheesecake, although it didn’t look like or taste like the ones he posted on Instagram. Chen said he never found out how much the woman paid for the cheesecake, which he sells for $35.
“It could have been anything. It could have been pancake batter that was put into a quart container, you never know,” Chen said. “That’s when I kind of started realizing there was this secondary market out there.”
Another hit popup, Horn Barbecue, also found its wares on a secondary market, right around the time it was peaking in popularity a little more than a year ago — before it opened its permanent restaurant in Oakland, where the lines are just as long as they were when Horn was a popup.
According to owner Matt Horn, someone once tried to sell a togo container of his brisket and ribs on Craigslist. A friend notified him of the posting, which appeared online the same day he hosted a local popup event. He never found out whether anyone bought it or what the price of the order was.
Of course, people trying to pay more to get their hands on hotticket items isn’t new. Sites like eBay, Ticketmaster and StubHub were all places where Bay Area folks could find tickets for “Hamilton” while the musical was in San Francisco last year. And in 2019, during the days of the Popeyes chicken sandwich craze, Facebook was where people tried to resell chicken sandwiches for higher prices. A man in Maryland, around that time, offered to sell a chicken sandwich from the restaurant for $100, plus an additional $38.52 for delivery.
A similar thing is happening among Bay Area cheesecake lovers. Chen said he often hears from people who post his cheesecake on their Instagram stories, and are quickly inundated with messages from followers asking if they can buy the cheesecake from them. Some have fielded offers for as much as $100 for one cheesecake, he said. Others just approach Chen online, hoping he’ll prioritize their orders.
“I definitely get people offering things like money so they can get ahead in lines. It’s just not how I operate,” he said. “Sometimes they’ll say they’ll buy 10 cheesecakes from me if I move them ahead. I just don’t do it.”
Horn said he, too, has been approached by individuals offering to buy more barbecue if it means getting ahead in his lines, be it online or outside his restaurant. And before Chen and Horn, there was Oakland popup legend Chef Smelly, who had to decline similar arrangements when his Creole food popup in the East Bay was arguably the most popular in the region, from 2017 to 2018.
But some in the world of popular popups say the wait times and the challenges of getting the food are part of the experience. Horn Barbecue lines have resembled concert lines both during its popup days and now at the fullservice restaurant. People sometimes bring snacks and lawn chairs as they wait hours for Horn’s brisket and ribs.
While some potential customers groan over the wait, Horn has said there’s nothing to be done about that, especially since his barbecue is cooked slowly over hours, and he checks all of the meats before they can reach a customer.
“The lines are just part of it,” Horn said recently, a sentiment that was echoed by Chen. Both chefs have said they want to be fair to all customers, which means making sure the ordering experience is the same for everyone — even people who have more money to drop.
Ramping up production could be a solution for the chefs, but it is not a simple one. Chen said making more cheesecakes would require spending more money on ingredients and possibly hiring help, which is difficult on his shoestring budget. The same could be said for Horn during the early days of his popup when he cooked every piece of barbecue, and the only help he had, or could afford, came from his wife.
As for the fake Basuku cheesecake, Chen said he has yet to discover where the mix came from, and has yet to see it being sold since. “I just don’t like the idea of some older person getting scammed out of money for buying something that they think is one thing but turns out to be something else,” he said. “If I saw the fake batter thing was really prevalent, and someone was really trying to copycat the brand, then I would look more into it. Right now, it’s just a funny story.”
Still, the secondary market for popups, however small and infrequent it may be, is a compliment, he said.
“The good thing is that this whole situation shows how indemand the cheesecakes are,” he said. “It lets me know people like them, that I’m doing something right.”