I think our first day in business, we sold like 300
scoops, which was a ton of ice cream for us. Today, on a really busy day in the summer, we will
serve over 40,000 guests in our scoop shops across the country and that number
is growing. In 2008, Ben Van Leeuwen saw an opening in the ice
cream market for a product made with only high quality butter, fat egg yolk and cream mixed with chocolate
from farms in Ecuador, barrel aged vanilla and pistachios flown in from
Sicily. Fast forward a year and Ben, his brother Pete, and
close friend Laura O'Neill were selling this artisanal ice cream on the streets of New York City out of a
repurposed post office truck. Today, Van Leeuwen has grown from a single ice cream
truck to a national brand with 50 scoop shops from coast to coast. Over 10,000 stores carry the brand's
pints, and throughout its history, it's offered close to 500 flavors, ranging from honeycomb and wild
blueberry shortcake to more unique combinations like Kraft Mac and Cheese and
Hidden Valley Ranch. There are three numbers to look out for in this story. $60,000, the amount it took to get Van Leeuwen off the
ground. $18.7 million, the amount secured in a 2020 funding
round. And $300,000 the amount of money Van Leeuwen pulls in
on a good day across all of its scoop shops. Here's how Van Leeuwen turned a lone ice cream truck
into a multi-million dollar ice cream empire. Hey, I'm Ben Van Leeuwen, the co-founder and CEO of Van
Leeuwen Ice Cream. And I'm here at our shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Ben Van Leeuwen grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. Even from a young age, he had an interest in business. Ben was just a college freshman when he first entered
the world of ice cream. I saw an advertisement in the newspaper. It said drive an ice cream truck, earned $500 a week. I needed a summer job. I responded to that ad and I ended up driving a Good
Humor ice cream truck. Ben drove that Good Humor truck for two summers saving
money. Fast forward to when I was graduating college. I had done okay in college, but not great. I hadn't done internships. I had just driven an ice cream truck and I hadn't
thought I want to work in food. But that all changed when he came across a Mr. Softee truck while walking down the street in New
York. Suddenly, the idea to start an ice cream company hit
him. There was no hesitation. There was no maybe I'll do this, maybe this was a good
idea. And part of that is because I knew it worked. I had sold ice cream off of trucks. This wasn't reinventing the wheel. This wasn't rocket science. Ben wanted to sell artisanal ice cream with simple,
high quality ingredients, and in 2008, Van Leeuwen and ice cream was born. Creating a business plan took a year. Ben's inspiration for his ice cream recipe came from
Thomas Keller's cookbook, Bouchon. It was a creme anglaise vanilla ice cream. And what was unique about it is it had a lot of eggs,
it had a lot of cream. Of course, whole vanilla beans. This base carried over into Van Leeuwen's recipe, the
Greenpoint apartment that Ben, Laura and Pete shared became the tasting lab where Van Leeuwen's first
flavors were developed. I think there were 35 versions of chocolate that I
really liked. Single origin from here, single farm from here, blends
from here. More couverture, more cocoa powder, less fat, more
fat, a little less sugar. After the flavors were finalized, it was time to get
down to business. We determined that we would need $250,000 to start Van
Leeuwen Ice Cream. That was enough to buy a step van for about
$60,000 to spend another $60,000 turning it into an ice cream truck. That number would leave them with enough money to build
inventory and find a factory. But from the outset, there was serious trouble
realizing Ben's vision. It was really hard for us to get the money. We had no business experience. I thought it was a great idea. I thought I was a good pitch guy. I guess I wasn't that good. We didn't raise $250,000. We didn't even raise close to that. We were able to scrape together $60,000. But the trio were determined to make the $60,000 work. So how do you start an ice cream company with $60,000? That's not even enough to buy an ice cream making
machine or the two machines you need to make ice cream. For the first two years, we outsourced all of our
production. So step one of starting an ice cream company was
finding what we call a co-packer, a co manufacturer, a factory to make our ice cream. So we found a small factory in upstate New York. We went up there for every production run hand
grinding, heirloom nutmeg, Ceylon cinnamon into big brewing bags. Step two for us was buying the truck on eBay,
retrofitting that into an ice cream truck. The first truck we bought on eBay was $2,500. It was an absolute piece of bleep. We bought old reproduction grills from 1950s trucks,
put them on these 1980s trucks. And then marketing in those days was 100% bringing our
truck, parking it on the street and selling ice cream. The brand's esthetic was considered crucial from the
very beginning. The team hired an illustrator for $80 bucks an hour to
create a logo, as well as to paint botanical drawings for each flavor on its truck. But the logo was very much inspired by a combination of
like Victorian scripts and sort of Americana 1950s . 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. Somebody had said, Wall Street's really good, it's very
busy. We spend like 90 minutes driving around Wall Street. We can't park, so we give up. We drive up to Canal Street. It's like June 21st ish, 2008, 80 degrees outside. So we're thinking this is the spot. We pull up and literally after like 30 minutes, we had
not sold a single ice cream, nor had anyone even like showed an interest in the
truck. So at this point, we think maybe this idea wasn't a
good idea. So the corner of Green and Prince in Soho, we pull up
this old ice cream truck. By the time we've opened the window, there's 15 people
in line. So at that moment, we knew, okay, we're on to
something here. Van Leeuwen launched with ten flavors, including
classics like Chocolate and Vanilla, as well as more unique flavors like Gianduja and Ginger. 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. That same day they were approached by a
representative from Whole Foods. And they said, Do you do wholesale? We said, we'll do anything that brings in revenue. So yes, we do wholesale. And three months later, we were on the shelves in
Whole Foods. By the end of that first summer, they were operating
three trucks in New York City. But despite their success, the early days for Van
Leeuwen were stressful. It was horrible. I mean, it was so, so hard. I mean, you're driving this particularly in our case,
these trucks that were built in 1988 that were used by the post office for two decades, that we turned into
ice cream trucks that worked half the time. There wasn't a choice to say, okay, the trucks didn't
work, let's pivot to stores or let's take a month off and regroup and decide what to
do. We needed the revenue. We had to work hard. Their hard work paid off. By 2010, Van Leeuwen hit $1 million in revenue during
those first ten years, Ben, Laura and Pete say they paid themselves about
$40,000 each. From there, things continued to pick up. So two years into the business, we had the opportunity
to open a brick and mortar shop that was not part of the business plan. The Brooklyn shop had things that the truck didn't like
electricity and running water. It also generated more revenue than the truck. Literally, within three hours of opening that shop, we
said we are never building another ice cream truck. 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 and in 2014 hired a part time bookkeeper and office assistant. By 2017, Van Leeuwen had grown to ten scoop shops,
including three in Los Angeles. In 2018, the company raised its first institutional
financing a $3.9 million investment from Strand Equity Partners funded the
opening of new scoop shops, increased production and the expansion of the Van Leeuwen corporate team. That investment also allowed Van Leeuwen to embark on
a major overhaul of its brand identity. It enlisted the design firm Pentagram to refresh the
look of its now iconic pints. We spent over a year and a half with them working on a
design that wasn't only great, that wasn't only distinct, but
that was completely reflective of what we had done, the ethos of the company, what we
believe in, and our philosophy. So the Van Leeuwen pints went from this to this. You have the logo, you have the flavor name, you have
nothing else. In $18.7 million funding round in 2020 helped pay for
increased wholesale production and another scoop shop as well as a larger corporate team. Van Leeuwen has released nearly 500 distinct flavors
over the past 15 years, some of which you might be surprised to see in ice cream form like
mac and cheese or ranch dressing. But these unusual flavors aren't just for shock value. They serve a crucial business purpose as well. So the Kraft mac and cheese is actually really, really
good. Caramelized onion jam and ice cream is awesome. From a more tactical marketing approach, they allow us
to very efficiently build brand awareness so we do not advertise. We believe that we can best serve our customers,
putting money into our products and into developing our teams, not into advertising. So doing a flavor like Hidden Valley Ranch and Kraft
Mac and Cheese exposes a lot of people to the brand. And we hope that not only will they enjoy those
really crazy flavors, but they'll try the vanilla, they'll try the honeycomb, they'll try the
Earl Gray tea next. Van Leeuwen's most popular flavor is Honeycomb,
followed by brown sugar cookie dough chunk. These days, a scoop costs $6.90 at most locations. The company is constantly coming up with new products. This year, it added ice cream sandwiches to its menu,
and its team has grown well beyond its humble beginnings. We have over a thousand team members, 60 in corporate,
50 in manufacturing, and the remainder are the folks running the ice cream
shops. 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. A really busy day in the summer. We generate up to $300,000 in revenue trading ice
cream for money. We will serve over 40,000 guests in our scoop shops
across the country and that number is growing in our wholesale
channel people will buy as many as 50,000 pints every day. Ben, Laura and Pete still play a vital role in the
company's day to day operations. Here in their Greenpoint office, the team samples new
flavors, reviews new store designs and any ongoing operations to keep Van Leeuwen growing. By the end of 2023, Van Leeuwen plans to open 18 new
scoop shops across the US, as well as its first international location in Singapore. In 2024, they'll open 25 to 30 new scoop shops. I think as long as we are happy, as long as we're able
to run a company where our team is happy and that provides
people jobs that are good and as long as we're of course able to keep our guests happy and continue
serving them good ice cream, we will continue to grow Van Leeuwen.
