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>> My name is Robyn Sue Fisher.
And I'm the founder and chief ice cream maker at Smitten Ice Cream.
Started off, actually, at the GSB when I dove into entrepreneurship.
And took a bunch of classes in that space and decided to
focus on something I loved and was passionate about, and that was ice cream.
My goal was to take a product I love and make it even better.
Looked into the science behind ice cream and figured out that a lot of
the quality of the product is the results of ice crystal formation.
The colder you freeze a product, the smaller the ice crystals can be,
and the smaller the ice crystals, the smoother the texture could be.
So if I could actually freeze it really, really cold, I could make it to order.
I started playing around with liquid nitrogen,
which is negative 321 degrees Fahrenheit, and I started literally, at GSB,
I was sourcing a tank of liquid nitrogen and making ice cream in my backyard.
And pretty much by the end of my two years there, I was known as the ice cream girl.
Some people didn't even know my name.
I was just the ice cream girl.
I actually spent the next two years after the GSB working in
a basement shop with a brilliant engineer and really just making ice cream over and
over again with different types of mixing devices.
And we ended up with a prototype of our, now machine that we use at our shop,
which we call Brr.
What I decided to do was just sort of go rogue a little bit,
and figured I needed something to carry this, you know,
40 pound stainless steel device and a tank of liquid nitrogen.
And I also wanted something to sort of prove that I was trying to
do a wholesome approach to ice cream, despite that it looked kind of modern.
So the Radio Flyer wagon idea sort of came about.
I was telling someone that I was selling on the street, and
they were like, oh, Wall Street?
And I was like uh-uh, the, the street, as in the street.
And so that was my life for the next nine months,
I just sold ice cream on streets and alleys and parks in San Francisco.
I actually got to the point where I was totally fine with it not working,
I just wanted to know.
And then we started getting lines and lines and lines and selling out every day.
So we were able to create enough momentum to open up our first shop in Hayes Valley,
San Francisco.
And that shop has now been open for two years.
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It's a very, very interesting shop in that it's actually built out of
a 40 foot long recycled shipping container.
And what we did is we cut that shipping container in half.
And half is our tiny little kitchen, and half is our open retail front bar.
And on that front bar, you will see four of our Brrr machines.
You can interact and
watch your very own ice cream being made right in front of you.
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You actually get to see this fog,
this sort of nitrogen vapor that forms around the machines.
San Francisco fog over the machine.
It has like a double-helical mixer, which together sort of
scrapes every surface of itself to create the exceptionally small ice crystal.
And then it has proprietary software that controls viscosity and dosing.
So it actually gives real-time feedback, and the machine is quote-unquote smart,
and it knows when it's created the perfect scoop, and it stops for you.
I think it's really,
really hard to do two things better than anyone else in the world.
So we don't.
We just focus on that one thing and we make sure that everything that comes out
of our shop is that one thing done as best as possible.
Having such a small menu allows us to pick the best of the best ingredients and
make sure that every single flavor is as perfect as we can make it.
>> So we got the salted caramel and it was very cold was what Emily said about it.
It was delicious.
So we got the salted caramel and it was very cold, was what Emily said about it.
She remarked how cold it was, but it was very smooth.
>> When I eat their ice cream, it tastes very natural.
>> You get to see like, where its coming from.
They are full disclosure on like, the ingredients, which is always nice.
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>> I'd been in the consulting world and had done a lot of biotech and
health care and large-scale big companies.
And I really wanted to go after something that was more personable and, and
actually got a real, human reaction from people.
Ice cream was always a thing for me and my family that brought people together, and
it was always a thing that was a delightful moment in the day.
My advice for
entrepreneurs is go after something that you love, and not just a business idea.
I didn't have, you know, any real success until year four, and so I definitely don't
think I could have kept going unless I really loved what I was doing.
I've got about ten different hats that I get to wear, but
it all comes down to making people happy.
I definitely make sure that part of my day is just seeing the smiles on
the faces of the customers who come through the door.
Makes me very grateful to be, to be where I am and for the path that I've taken.
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