Scooping gelato at Fishtown’s Cloud Cups, a Philly teen dreams of launching her own venture

My Summer Job is a weekly series that explores the jobs of seasonal workers in Philadelphia. Each week, we’ll share stories from a typical day in the life of the people who make summer happen in the region.

Some teens spend their summers reluctantly working one part-time job, grumbling through each shift when they’d rather be somewhere else. Madison McGill is not one of those teens. The aspiring entrepreneur is working two part-time jobs this summer at locally owned businesses, taking notes from the founders while she dreams of being her own boss one day.

A rising senior at the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, McGill plans to go to community college and esthetician school, and she wants to start her own business after that. But for now she’s saving up money by working for her mom’s business, and she took on a second job for the summer at a new gelato shop in Fishtown.

McGill, who splits her time between Northeast Philadelphia and Delaware County, started scooping gelato at Cloud Cups in July. The Inquirer joined Madison for a weekday evening shift, to catch the vibe of working at Fishtown’s new gelato spot.

Cloud Cups opened its brick-and-mortar store in the spring, after founder Galen Thomas built a following with his pop-up gelato business. The new shop is attached to Pizza Brain, occupying a space previously held by Little Baby’s ice cream.

When she got the job at Cloud Cups, McGill was already working part-time for her mother, Charisse McGill, who owns Lokal Artisan Foods. The company, founded in 2018, sells French toast bites at several locations throughout the city.

Lokal Artisan Foods had previously teamed up with Cloud Cups to create a French toast gelato, so Madison McGill was familiar with the company. When she learned that Thomas was opening a new shop, she asked if she could have a job.

It’s a small staff, McGill said, and she works about three shifts a week, sometimes four, making $10 per hour. She gets a tips here and there, she said, but not a lot.

“It’s fun to work here honestly, and it’s a pretty easy job,” McGill said. “I don’t really care how much it pays.”

Having prior experience in food service made it easy to learn the job, McGill said, and Thomas told her on her first day that she didn’t seem to need any more training.

“The gelato is pretty easy to scoop,” she said, “a lot softer” than ice cream.

She’s tasted every flavor Thomas creates, but she rarely treats herself to an entire cup. The best part of the job, she said, is watching customers enjoy it.

“When you like scoop it up and make it look all pretty and stuff, they’re like, ‘Oh my God.’”

On a rainy Wednesday evening, the shop was quiet. McGill started her shift by cleaning the serving area, then passed the time looking at her phone, facing the door in case a customer arrived. After almost an hour of waiting, and after the rain storms had passed, a customer walked in.

Some days are like that, McGill said, but sometimes it gets much busier. One night she served a line of people that had stretched from the freezer to the front door of the shop. “It took me forever to get down the line,” she said.

McGill got some entrepreneurial inspiration from watching her own mother, and now Thomas, start their ventures. But she has unique ideas of how she’ll build her own brand.

“My mom thought I would want to be in the food industry because every company I worked for was in food,” she said. “But I like beauty, cosmetic, personal care type stuff. That’s what I want to do.”

She already has a business plan sketched out for her own venture. She wants to open not just an esthetician shop where she’ll work, but a lounge where “the best of the best in the city” can provide services from waxing to facials to lashes.

“I want to own it,” she said.