Holiday cheer is serious business.

Sure, it’s meant to be playful and easy. But the planning and execution — we see you, mothers everywhere — is quite difficult.

That doesn’t mean it can’t be fun, though. A little silly, even. Cheeky.

“Much like Santa, Shift Meal only exists if the people believe,” quips Stephanie Stanton, one of the founders of the pop-up. Known for tongue-in-cheek menu items that play on words and trick the eye — a margherita margarita, an edible ash tray — Shift Meal is the brainchild of friends Stanton, Dan McInerney, Donovan Herman and Brandon Day.

Since their last event in November 2023, McInerney has gotten married and Day is now living in LA. “We lost him, but his presence is still felt,” says Stanton. All four have day jobs which are “boring and don’t need to be talked about,” says Stanton. Shift Meal is the group’s high stakes — paying customers want to have a laugh and have a great meal, too — creative outlet that has been humming in the background for the past two years, even without concrete events taking place.

“It almost feels like we’ve been doing it,” says Herman. “Just because we talk about it so often.” McInerney says they were throwing around the “it would be so much fun if” phrase enough that they figured they better put their ideas into action.

Enter: magnanimous Saint Nick (and former corporate cube mate of McInerney), Rob Zorch. “We needed artificial pressure, so we said ‘Rob, pick a date,’” says McInerney. That date is Friday, Dec. 19, when Shift Meal will be popping up at Zorch in a collaborative fashion, with Zorch selling a limited menu and McInerney and crew hawking dishes and drinks a la “How Shift Meal Stole Christmas.”

Shift Meal menu details are TBA (follow their Instagram for a menu drop week-of) but Herman says you can expect “various holiday favorites” being transformed into something “that we would want to eat, you know, at any time.”

McInerney adds that this may include a take on fruit cake, or other seemingly noxious dishes that we remember not-so fondly.

The upcoming event will differ slightly from Shift Meal’s five 2023 Zorch takeovers. Starting at 5 p.m. (or 5:30 p.m., whenever they can get rolling) the pop-up will be first come, first served, with customers able to order a la carte from the Shift Meal menu or Zorch menu.

Unlike their seated dinners, this holiday bonanza will be more of a free-for-all—it’s Carytown the weekend before Christmas. Stanton says the looser structure means more creative freedom, but also more stress. “Zorch is such a small space—it’s a delicate balance between trying to do too much and also providing people options,” says Stanton.

Plus, there’s that cerebral bit on which the pop-up is founded. Without a seated audience waiting for each course, there’s no opportunity to explain the “seven layers deep joke in my own brain,” says McInerney. Which means quirky options, but nothing too out of left field, though McInerney promises there will still be “some surprises.”

It’s difficult not to lean into the zany, especially when Shift Meal has been able to nail concepts as complex as a play on caviar service, wherein they juiced down romaine, cucumber, tomato and radish—along with balsamic and white wine vinegar—to create jelly-like, “caviar” pearls.

“I’m always trying to put as many weird ingredients as possible into something without turning it into an absolute mess,” says Herman.

There’s an element of the uncanny. Drinks that should be food, food that should be drinks. Stanton say she can’t stop trying to “put meat in a drink for some reason.”

McInerney embraces a good old dive into the WTF. “The nicest thing anyone ever said to me at any of the pop-ups was ‘I can’t eat this, it’s disgusting,’” says McInerney of the trompe l’oeil ash tray dessert. “That’s the goal.”

The Shift Meal pop-up takes place on Friday, Dec. 19 at 5 or 5:30 p.m. at Zorch Pizza, located at 2923 W. Cary St. in Carytown.