As the Ice Cream Churns

We finally did it, we finally opened The Social!  Join us for a conversation about the ups and down of opening day and the first few months of business.

We've been building out our new ice cream parlor, the Social, for the past few months. Opening Day is just a few days away. We're not quite ready, and we're not quite sure we will be, but one way or the other we'll be open soon. Come and hear the latest challenges as we get ready to launch the Social.

We're midway through construction on our new shop. We discuss the ups and downs of building out a shop in 2021, our fears and our excitement as we move closer to opening the Social ( www.theSocialBrooklyn.com)

We walk you through the first steps we need to take to open our new shop, and the hurdles we still have to overcome.

We signed a lease on a new space for a brand new company on March 16th 2021, one year to the day after we filed for bankruptcy. We talk about the new company, the meaning behind the name and what led us to this point.

This week we answer many of the questions listeners have had throughout the podcast.

Starting and running a business with your partner has it's own set of difficulties. Raising a family, growing a business and maintaining your relationship can be even more challenging. This week we explore what it means to raise a family, raise a business and how best to stay balanced and joyous throughout.

We'd opened our first shop on Vanderbilt Ave. with our own money. When we decided to grow Ample Hills and open a factory we had to borrow money from the bank. The only way the bank would loan the business money was if Brian and I signed a personal guarantee. That means if the business goes belly up (bankrupt), then we still owe that money.

After we'd exhausted all efforts to raise money, we filed for bankruptcy. We filed on March 15th, the day before New York City went into lockdown due to COVID-19. It was a very dark and scary time on so many levels and yet we had high hopes for the value and sale of the company we created from scratch.

It was summer of 2019 when we learned we had a cash flow problem and wouldn't make it through the winter. We spent the next 9 months trying to raise money to raise the company.

We opened our Factory in Brooklyn in July of 2018 but didn't start making ice cream until September. And there was a big learning curve... ** Sonic Note ** Near the end of the episode the white noise that you hear is the sound of rain on the log cabin we recorded this episode at, in the Adirondacks.

We opened our Disney shop in May of 2016 at Disney's Boardwalk in Orlando. This precipitated the need to open a much larger production facility as we'd reached capacity at our Gowanus location. The search to build a factory where we had 100% control over our ice cream making and our baking had begun. But our vision was always about being playful, educating folks on how ice cream is made and telling stories...

Once we started shipping ice cream we were able to attract some famous fans such as Bob Iger, Steven Spielberg, Oprah and JJ Abrams to name but a few...

We started with a single pushcart in Prospect Park in the summer of 2010 and opened our first scoop shop in May of 2011. We were novice entrepreneurs and new parents in search of a neighborhood ice cream shop filled with nostalgia and whimsy and over the top, playful ice cream flavors. We are proud to have founded Ample Hills Creamery; named after a Walt Whitman poem about the connections between people across time and space. What is it then between us? What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us? Whatever it is, it avails not--Distance avails not, and place avails not, I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine. --Walt Whitman, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry 1856