Scrub Daddy. Bombas. Squatty Potty.
What does a new Bloomington egg sandwich shop have in common with these household heavy-hitters?
Well, in a way, we have Shark Tank to thank for them. Although in the case of Scramblin’ Egg, we have a Shark Tank-derived competition called Hatch Bloomington (fitting, no?) which gave Grant Veitenheimer and Nick Peterson $100,000 to develop their business when they won last year.
Veitenheimer and Peterson, both breakfast lovers and diner regulars, started Scramblin’ Egg out of a traveling trailer: “About 12 foot by six feet, so a really small little trailer,” Veitenheimer says.
“We just started small, operated only out of Bloomington,” he continues. “We only got our license in Bloomington just because we kind of wanted to build up a customer base there.”
But the longtime friends always had brick-and-mortar ambitions, which is why they entered 2024’s Hatch competition, beating out more than 100 other small businesses to win the money and take over the former Hong Kong Garden space at 7828 Portland Ave. S. Their grab-and-go breakfast sandwich shop opened a few weeks ago.
Scramblin’ Egg is a build-your-own situation; you can opt for a sandwich, burrito, or bowl, then choose from a menu of veggies, meats, and sauces. The food trailer origins helped Veitenheimer and Peterson hone the menu and figure out their assembly line-style prep setup, but while the tight menu simplifies the ordering and cooking process, it doesn’t feel tight—I’m no math genius, but if you have three vessels, seven veggies, four meats, and five kinds of sauce, that’s gotta be like… 1,000 total possible combinations, right?
Veitenheimer says their goal was to find a “middle ground” between a sit-down diner experience and the fast-food options prevalent in Bloomington, with simple ingredients done really well. After grabbing a selection of sandwiches, burritos, and bowls last week and enjoying them in nearby Smith Park (no seating at the brick-and-mortar), we’d say this Bloomington newbie offers not just a middle ground but the best of both worlds: restaurant quality served at reasonable prices.
Let’s start with the sandwich, served with Norwegian milk bread from nearby Taste of Scandinavia. The towering loaves result in big, tall slices, which look good sitting upright in Scramblin’ Egg’s sandwich sacks, and more importantly taste tremendous—a little tangy, a little sweet, and super soft.
If you’ve had Japanese milk bread, you’ll notice that the texture is similar, though the Norwegian style isn’t as thick-cut or dense or square-shaped, and it’s a little less sweet. This bread has the same pillowy softness, but withstands the ingredients within—of crucial importance, since a Scramblin’ Egg sandwich arrives fully loaded.
Inside, we enjoyed bites of lightly spicy, crumbly, chorizo-adjacent sausage, piled in along with fluffy, plentiful eggs. The warm heat, paired with Scramblin’ Egg’s “Spicy Scramblin’ Sauce” (think a thick sriracha aioli) was a pleasant pop against the soft and mild bread.
The burritos we ordered were so hefty, practically the size of a forearm and densely packed with a base of seasoned potatoes and yellow rice, that one Racket staffer quickly started using the foil-wrapped giants for bicep curls. All veggies were sauteed to perfection and nestled in along the eggs for the length of the burrito, and the vegetarian version was just $8—Best Budget Bites territory.
In fact, speaking of prices, we were wowed by what we got for our money across the board. A single sausage McMuffin from McDonald’s is, like, six bucks these days, and you know the animal welfare situation there is uh… well, it’s more pleasant to not think about it. Scramblin’ Egg sources eggs from Larry Schultz Organic Farm in Owatonna, and the quality is especially visible in the breakfast bowl, where you can see them carefully layered over a base of potatoes, rice, and quinoa. We got our bowl with country gravy, something we’d definitely tell you to consider as well.
And we’d also suggest tossing in an order of Cinni Minis ($5); the cinnamon sugar-dusted pancakes served with a side of icing or syrup were first introduced at the tiny trailer but didn’t last long due to space constraints. They’re back now, along with Hash Bites ($4), thick, hearty bricks of hash browns crisped to perfection and served alongside Scramblin’ Sauce.
Veitenheimer and Peterson loved their trailer days, but the food truck life is harder than it looks—taking everything out to clean the truck daily, schlepping the whole setup from storage unit to commissary kitchen to service site, bumping elbows while working the griddle. But yes, the two have heard how much you love it.
“People want us to go back to the food truck, and… I don’t know if I’m ready for it yet!” Veitenheimer laughs. “Maybe someday.”
Scramblin’ Egg
Address: 7828 Portland Ave. S., Bloomington
Hours: Monday- Saturday, 6 a.m.-2 p.m.
