The Boulder Ice Cream Story

"Hello, I'm Adam. I am in charge of this operation. When I was shorter, I told my dad that ice cream was a good business and that I would help him get started. Well, the rest is history, so to speak. Yeah, I know, it is pretty unique for a kid like me to have such responsibility, but the way I figure it, ice cream is better when it has some creative "kid energy" in it. Besides, it's fun 'cuz no flavor gets out the door until I taste it!"

"When I was shorter and had just learned to walk (way back in 1995), my dad would take me to the best ice cream shop in town - Boulder Ice Cream on the Pearl Street mall. The shop was run by Uncle Larry and his sons - ok, he's not my real uncle, but I like to call him that. Anyway, Uncle Larry had spent 10 years in his super secret laboratory figuring out how to make the world's best ice cream. When he got it figured out, he opened Boulder Ice Cream."

"Well, a couple years later, Uncle Larry decided he needed to sell Boulder Ice Cream to someone else because his sons were moving away after college and with as busy as the place was, he couldn't run it all by himself. So I told my dad he should help Uncle Larry out and take over the business for him. My dad said he didn't know anything about ice cream except how to eat it, but I assured him that Uncle Larry would give me the scoop on all the secrets. And with me in charge, it would be a success."

"So Boulder Ice Cream changed hands in 1997. The next month, things got challenging. We found out that our lease was not going to be renewed on the Pearl Street Mall and we were going to have to move. We found another place in the Marriott Hotel Plaza, but it was really expensive. My dad said we were going to have to figure out other ways to make enough money to pay rent. So I told him we should put our ice cream in grocery stores (I got a raise for that idea)."

"After 2 1/2 years, we figured out that we just couldn't sell enough ice cream cones to pay the high rent in the hotel so we had to move out. It was sad not to have a scoop shop anymore, but at least people could still get Boulder Ice Cream at the grocery stores. We had about 20 grocery store accounts by then!"

"Now we have a little factory in Boulder on Walnut Street, and we supply almost 200 stores in 16 states. Along the way, I told my dad to get some management help so he would still have time to play with me. We found Glennise, our marketing guru, to help my dad out. It has worked out really well cuz she has a lot of good ideas and is really nice too."