Why is it a miracle this location turned 3?
Obviously, we celebrated ICF2's birthday with lots of ice cream.
But, here's the story...
3.5 years ago, we bought a run-down service station as our 2nd location and began a large-scale remodel.
The building turned out beautiful, we had freezers full of ice cream, and more excitement than we knew what to do with!
Opening day and the few weeks that followed were a huge success.
Having no idea a global pandemic would knock out all our foot traffic just a month later. Covid-19 changed our business model forever. We thought this would be just the 2nd of many Ice Cream Factory locations, but once Covid hit, we had to brainstorm ways to keep our employees employed, our bills paid, and not waste all the ice cream in our freezers.
Immediately, we began offering free delivery. And while this worked for a bit, it still was not the fix that we needed.
So, we pivoted.
We began packaging our ice cream into personal sized containers and we hit the road, driving from grocery store to grocery store literally begging them to put our ice cream on their shelves.
Because grocery stores were also having a tough time getting their hands on products, a lot of them agreed. We hand scooped every container for months and months. A labor of love.
And now, our business model includes over 2,000 retail locations who sell our family's ice cream. It's still kind of unbelievable. Some of our large name retails include :
