Hey Everyone, The other day I watched a youtube video interviewing the founder of Van Leeuwen's ice cream. The numbers were really intriguing to me so I did a bit of my own research as well.
Here are my findings:
Ben’s Journey began with a simple summer job driving a Good Humor ice cream truck.
And through this simple little job, he was able to pick up a couple of things about the ice cream business.
In 2008, He got the idea to create an artisanal ice cream with high-quality ingredients.
So he did what any rational person with an idea would do……
He and his roommates turned their apartment into an ice cream testing lab where their first-ever recipes were born.
They played around with the recipe by adding a lot of eggs, a lot of cream, and of course, whole vanilla beans.
And 35 versions of chocolate ice cream later. They finally had a couple of recipes they felt were ready for market.
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Now that they had a great Product, They needed to figure out how to sell it.
$250,000.
That is the number they believed they needed in order to be able to start the business.
- $60,000 to buy a van.
- $60,000 to turn it into an Ice cream truck..
- And the rest to build inventory and find a factory.
But obviously, like all great stories, that first idea didn’t work.
Nobody wanted to give them $250,000 just to make an ice cream truck.
But luckily enough for them, they were able to raise $60,000. (which is honestly already baffling)
Which was about a fourth of what they thought they needed.
How do you start an ice cream company with $60,000?
“That's not even enough to buy the two machines you need to make ice cream.” - Ben
So they decided to take a more crafty approach.
For the first two years…
They outsourced all of their production.
Now that they had that covered.
They needed to figure out how to spend the little money they had wisely.
The first thing they bought was an old 1980’s truck from eBay for $2500.
Which in the words of Ben. Was an absolute piece of crap.
They then paid an illustrator $80 bucks an hour to create a logo, as well as to paint botanical drawings for each flavor on its truck.
And after obtaining a permit, Van Leeuwen's truck was ready for the streets.
but finding a sweet spot to set up shop would be yet another challenge.
Since they were in New York City they initially went to Wall Street. It’s a very busy street so obviously they would get a lot of sales right?
Wrong.
They drove around Wall Street for around 90 minutes trying to find parking. And Once they finally found a spot…
30 minutes later they haven’t sold a single ice cream. nor had anyone even shown an interest in the truck.
So at this point, they’re thinking maybe this wasn't a good idea.
But before giving up they decided to try another location.
They pulled up to the corner of Green and Prince in Soho.
And by the time they were even able to open the window……
There were 15 people in line.
And from that moment they knew they were onto something.
At the time, each scoop cost $3.95. On the first day of business, Laura, Ben, and Pete sold over 300 scoops of ice cream and brought in about $2,000.
What’s even more crazy is that on their FIRST DAY…
They were lucky enough to be approached by a representative from Whole Foods. The representative asked..
“Do you do wholesale?”
To which they responded..
“We'll do anything that brings in revenue. So yes, we do wholesale.“
And 3 months later they were on the shelves of Whole Foods.
(This is honestly one of their luckiest moments and probably one of the biggest reasons they were able to succeed so much)
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Here’s Their Insanely Unique Marketing Strategy:
Ranch flavored ice-cream. That’s one of Van Leeuwen’s Ice Cream flavors.
Sounds disgusting right?
Exactly.
A Marketing strategy that Van Leeuwen’s Ice Cream loves to use is creating flavors that just serve as shock value.
Someone will come into one of their locations and see Ranch flavored ice cream and will be so confused that they will take a picture of it and post it on their social media.
Giving the brand quite literally free marketing.
In fact, other than creating wacky flavors…
They Do Not Advertise.
Their customers do all the advertising for them when they talk about and share their strange flavors like Hidden Valley Ranch and Kraft Mac and Cheese.
And once they come in to see the strange flavors. They will also try their staple flavors like honeycomb or Earl Gray tea.
And hopefully, become a lifelong customer.
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So Where Are They Now?
Two years into the business they decided it was finally time to invest in a brick-and-mortar location.
And literally 3 hours after opening. They realized they would never go back to ice cream trucks.
The scoop shop kept the same aesthetic and design as the trucks and together with the pints at Whole Foods, helped put Van Leeuwen on the map.
In 2012, they started manufacturing ice cream in Brooklyn.
By 2017, Van Leeuwen had grown to ten scoop shops, including three in Los Angeles.
In 2020, they raised $18.7 million for increased wholesale production and another scoop shop as well as a larger corporate team.
while we couldn’t find a reliable source when it comes to their profit..
An earlier source stated that they made $125,000 in profit out of $425,000 in revenue back in their early days. (Their current profit likely isn’t anywhere close to those margins anymore due to their higher costs with expanding)
One of the biggest takeaways from this story is that running a business isn’t always going to be easy.
The team has said that their old trucks were constantly breaking in the early days leaving them stranded in the middle of the city.
And even when they began seeing success. They still only paid themselves $40,000/year for years to keep reinvesting into the business.
Today, Van Leeuwen operates nearly 50 scoop shops across the US and its pints are available in almost 10,000 grocery stores, including Whole Foods and Walmart locations across the country.
And generates up to $300,000 in revenue trading ice cream for money.
I know these can be annoying. But this is actually part of my newsletter coming out tomorrow where I research companies that have found success using unique marketing strategies. If you'd like you can read the rest :). If not that's totally fine. https://foundersbite.beehiiv.com/subscribe