Do Your Research
Interview with Brian and Jackie Smith
Owners of Ample Hills Creamery, Brooklyn
By Jeff Yoskowitz and Kathryn Gordon
Jeff: Hi Brian, Hi Jackie. What
is your concept and where did you get your concept from?
Brian: My background is in creative writing. I was a TV movie screen writer and directed
audio plays. I was always in the
creative and entertainment world, and always had a love of ice cream. I wanted to find something that was a little
more community based than writing, and to do something that was more than the
ice cream – I wanted to create a “gathering spot.”
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| From Ample Hills' website |
Kathryn: I first visited Ample Hills back on a cold
night in winter, and there were a lot of people in here enjoying the ice cream,
and also hanging out!
Brian: I went to every ice cream shop in Manhattan
and Brooklyn with my then 2-year old and researched ice cream shops in all 5
boroughs, looking at ways we could be different and have a competitive
advantage. We have created a space that
appeals to people year round.
I heard once: “Any
idiot can sell ice cream in the summer time, but what else are you going to do
the rest of the year?” If you can build
a space that people want to be in, you can make a living during the other 8
months of the year.
So many shops are small and you just get ice cream and
leave. We wanted to build a children’s play area, so when it was dark in the
middle of January they could go some place and get out of their house. The concept was to do artisanal, made from
scratch ice cream that didn’t have any pretentions from the foodie world. We offer fun, funky, playful, rotating,
changing flavors. People get excited
about that!
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| Ample Hills' Play Area |
Brian: In my competitive analysis, I learned that
the vast majority of companies don’t pasteurize their bases, and use an ice
cream mix. For me, there was never a
question of not pasteurizing, because for me and my creative background I knew
it would become too boring if I just started from a mix. I needed the challenge and complication of
the fun of pasteurizing, and our ice cream tastes better because it’s fresher.
Kathryn: You’re using local purveyors and farmers?
Brian: We source our milk, cream and eggs from
different farms. It has changed over
time because our production volume exceeds the level some farms can provide us
in terms of ingredients. It’s a
combination of what we can get, and who has enough milk for us.
Jeff: So you’re getting very fresh dairy products,
producing small batches, and pasteurizing yourself. Cost wise, how’s it working
out?
Brian: Clearly, we probably make some of the most
expensive ice cream in the city in terms of its food cost. But we’re making up the lower profit margin
in terms of volume. We ran out of ice
cream when we opened and had to close down for 9 days to restock.
The authenticity of the experience drives our volume. Customers waiting in line for their cone and
seeing the ice cream being made (with the explanation boards of the
process).
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| View into the ice cream production kitchen |
Jeff: What are your food costs like?
Brian: When I was doing my market research, I
learned that food costs (of a sustainable business) should be between 25-28%
and overall ours are okay. I have to trade off the cost of some of the more
expensive ingredient flavors versus the less expensive. Over time our purchasing power has gotten
better, and we’ve been able to keep the ratio because we’ve been able to lower
our base food costs.
Kathryn: You have a general manager in charge of the
front of the house and your wife Jackie does
the books and payroll. Are you doing the
production?
Brian: I was doing everything at first. We’ve now been open a year and 2 months, and
I’m trying to move in the direction that 2-3 people run the pasteurizer, and do
the baking. I’m still the only one
churning and doing the mix-ins.
All the staff and customers help to create flavors. I’m the final arbiter, but we have fan
contests on Facebook and involve our community.
Kathryn: You’ve gotten a lot of initial favorable
press, right?
Brian: It’s all just come to us, because what we
were doing was unique and different. I
now use social media, but a lot of our publicity came to us in our first four days
of opening. I didn’t plan it, but we ran
out of ice cream. Florence Fabricant at
the New York Times covered us and we had a line around the block and we didn’t
have any product. We had to shut down.
I believe that we have “earned our press,” and “earned the
lines” of people waiting for the ice cream.
I am passionate and did my research, planning our concept. We make product from scratch, on location and
that allows us creative freedom.
Jeff: What’s next for you at Ample Hills?
Brian: We are looking at opening an additional
retail space in Brooklyn with a production factory twice this size. We’d still like to be a destination spot, but
be able to offer ice cream classes, ice cream camp…
Kathryn: You already offer a lot to your community
through this location; I noticed your fun “Swap O Matic” machine here on my
first visit. And you have birthday
parties here for kids?
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| Jackie Smith in the retail shop |
Jackie: We have parties here every weekend! We custom created a unique “ice cream
churning bicycle” that kids enjoy using in their parties. Our general manager also runs kid drawing
contests and ice cream flavor/name contests on Twitter and Facebook.
Kathryn: All the “community space” takes away from
your production kitchen and I guess you’ve outgrown it?
Brian: It’s hard to decide how large the production
room was going to be, within a 900 square foot facility. I had to make the
kitchen as small as possible – but it’s impossible to research ahead of time
what you will ultimately need regarding space allocation. But producing a higher volume of ice cream
than I initially anticipated meant that in the first 9 days, I had to double
the kitchen space we had allocated, buy larger blast freezers and a larger
pasteurizer than I had initially purchased.
Jeff: What warnings would you give other
entrepreneurs?
Brian: Be more prepared for success! Like what am I going to do if I have 3 times
the number of people buying ice cream than I had planned for? I had prepared psychologically for the
opposite, but we did run out of ice cream.
Interestingly, that generated more press than it might have if we hadn’t
had to close down right after we opened.
Jackie: Also, everything always costs more than you’d
think. With such constant use, this is
our second set of guest tables. We wind
up painting every month the front of the ice cream case (because we couldn’t
afford tiles when we first installed the case).
Luckily, our landlord lives above and he is also our general contractor,
so we can get things fixed pretty quickly.
Brian: Get as long a lease as you can. I can’t believe entrepreneurs who are willing
to settle on 3-5 year leases. You create
all this “energy,” around your brand – it may not be transferable to another
location if you lose your lease. So I
wouldn’t put time, money and ambition into anything less than a 10-year lease,
or you might wind up paying twice.
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