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The new coronavirus pandemic has forced many businesses to shut down, but one strip club in Portland, Ore., is bouncing back with a novel way to keep giving customers what they desire: the food.
Dancers at the Lucky Devil Lounge are now delivering meals on heels as part of a brassy new venture called “Boober Eats” — a play on the popular Uber Eats service. The lounge takes and makes the orders, then two nearly topless women in pasties show up to drop off the food in person.
The nearly nude food deliveries started as a joke on social media after the club was forced to stop regular business, according to Lucky Devil Lounge owner Shon Boulden. He decided to give the idea a real shot on St. Patrick’s Day after receiving a flood of positive messages about it, since the statewide lockdown does not apply to food delivery.
The orders have been pouring in ever since.
“It’s crazy,” Boulden told the Oregonian. “We mutated our one business into a totally different style of business.”
Customers can call in or order online to have two dancers deliver hot food right to their door, with delivery fees starting at about $30. Boober Eats offers a wide range of pub food, from pizza and chicken fingers to steak bites and corndogs. Tipping the dancers is strongly encouraged.
“All the calls, people are just giddy and fun,” Boulden said. “Sometimes it’s a surprise for someone, sometimes it’s a birthday, sometimes it’s people that are really stoned.”
Boulden now has about 25 of his original 80 dancers running food deliveries from Thursday until the end of the weekend, since there simply isn’t any way for them to keep working inside the club.
The dancers say it’s a way to keep the money coming in, although they’ve gone from raking in hundreds of dollars a night to making close to minimum wage.
“Losing this job is devastating,” one dancer, who calls herself Kiki, told the Oregonian. “For the majority of us, it’s been an almost complete loss of income. I’m here supporting my community and trying to keep maintaining an income flow as best we can.”
The dancers are considered independent contractors under Oregon law, meaning they can’t claim unemployment benefits under the state’s sweeping coronavirus lockdown measures.
Dancer Brodie Grody says people were already hesitant to visit the strip club in the days before the lockdown, but now her original source of income has been “completely” wiped out.
“We really needed to step it up and start hustling,” she told Rolling Stone.
Boulden says he’s doing his best to provide the dancers with gloves, masks and sanitizing wipes, although they’re not always wearing masks for their deliveries.
Boober Eats has also seamlessly transitioned from the club’s “no touching the dancers” rule to a contactless delivery method. Boulden says a security guard accompanies the women on their deliveries, just to ensure that everyone is safely practising social distancing.
“Bags always go on the ground,” Grody says in one NSFW video of a delivery.
Several Instagram videos show the women are keeping very busy, with deliveries to men and women alike.
Dancer Toxic says it’s been a good way to make the best of the difficult COVID-19 situation.
“If you order your food from Lucky Devil, you get two babes to bring you your food,” she told local station KPTV.
“It’s tapas and tatas.”
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