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.