Elon Musk has tapped one of his most loyal lieutenants, Steve Davis, to oversee hiring for the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, the unofficial group tasked with slashing government jobs and spending. Davis, a longtime aerospace engineer for SpaceX, is president of Musk’s tunnel-drilling Boring Company and led cost-cutting measures at X, formerly Twitter. It was briefly speculated that he might even become CEO of the social media platform.
But locals will recognize Davis’s name from an entirely different realm: He was previously the owner of DC’s silliest frozen yogurt shop, Mr. Yogato.
Mr. Yogato, which opened in Dupont Circle in 2008, was known for its old-school Nintendo console, board games, and goofy discount stunts (reciting the battlefield speech from Braveheart in a Scottish accent could get you a deal). Davis also briefly owned an even goofier Dupont Circle bar called Thomas Foolery, where you could drink a beer ice cream float while playing Hungry Hungry Hippos or sit in the “king seat” and order a Smirnoff Ice via walkie-talkie.
In 2018, Davis sold Mr. Yogato for $1 on the condition that the new owner keep a SpaceX sign in the shop and supply him with free boba tea every week. The frozen yogurt shop closed permanently in the wake of the pandemic.
In more recent years, Davis made headlines for sleeping in Twitter’s headquarters with his partner and newborn baby as he helped Musk cut $500 million from the company’s annual operating costs. He entered the political fray this past election cycle, volunteering for Musk’s pro-Trump super PAC. Davis’s role in DOGE, first reported by Bloomberg, involves overseeing recruitment for the cost-cutting group, which is not an official government agency. It’s still unclear who is paying DOGE salaries.
“I’m just a normal engineer. I work on the capsules, I work on the rockets, I work on the launch sites,” Davis told me when I profiled him more than a decade ago. Rather than talk about being a literal rocket scientist, Davis preferred to chat about the annual karaoke tournament he co-hosted or the movie Pitch Perfect, which, at the time, he’d seen in the theater seven times.
“I guess there’s probably a deficiency of maturity going on here,” Davis said in that interview. “I should fix that at some point. As I’m talking to you right now, I’m at SpaceX in shorts and a T-shirt. I guess I should probably get nicer clothes.”
Jessica Sidman covers the people and trends behind D.C.’s food and drink scene. Before joining Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Food Editor and Young & Hungry columnist at Washington City Paper. She is a Colorado native and University of Pennsylvania grad.
