Photos by Stacie Joy
On a Thursday evening in August, Stanton followed up with a special promotion — the limited edition Mary O's "HONY" Irish soda bread scones. Stanton shared the deal with his more than 20 million social media followers worldwide. According to an Instagram post from Stanton, they took in more than $1 million in orders for scones by the end of the night.
Impressive, but there were some immediate logistical concerns. Such as! How to bake roughly 200,000 scones from Mary O's small kitchen.
There is a solution: Over the next two months, O'Halloran and some helpers will use the large ovens in the basement kitchen of St. Francis Xavier Church on West 16th Street to create these orders.
Fast forward to early last week, when 20,000 pounds of self-raising Irish flour was delivered (via Dublin) to Mary O's. To start the project, "the flour was infused with an Irish blessing by Mary herself, in an ancient ceremony featuring electric candles," as Stanton wrote in a Facebook post. (You can watch a video of the ceremony on Facebook.)
EVG contributor Stacie Joy stopped by Mary O's to watch part of the flour-blessing ceremony...