Who Knew?

When we decided as a family that the ice cream business was for us we didn't realize that there would be such a positive response from everyone around us. Every day someone asks me where the shop is going to be located, when we are going to open and most importantly...are we going to have their favorite flavor?? It's such a great feeling imagining our shop up and running that we have put forth a ton of hours already trying to find the best deal on supplies and products that have the best quality.

We have accomplished many of the steps involved in the process of opening a new business except for negotiating a lease and a few other things. As we have searched (I think we have driven more around town in the last month than we ever have) for that perfect location, YOU have been at the forefront of our choice. Joe will be meeting with a building owner to discuss a lease on Thursday, so cross your fingers that we can negotiate what we need so that your anticipation of our location will be over!

With that being said, we had already decided to 'repurpose' as much as we can for the shop. This has led us on a journey to find exactly the right decor and we found that Joe and I both have to be really excited about the item before we purchase it! In our business plan, we described our shop in detail about the ambiance and feel and we are well on our way to the eclectic, recycled, repurposed style!! I have posted a few pictures on our Facebook page of our finds (spoon and chalkboard) but the rest will have to wait until we open.

More to come soon..... :)

Reflections for the future

As Joe and I reflect on our lives in the last 11 years together, we know that everything happens for a reason. I have become a firm believer. We had started the debt snowball a few years back because we had so much debt and were living payday to payday.We started listening to the Dave Ramsey show, worked really hard to pay off debt using the debt snowball (it really works!), have an emergency fund and learned that you must not live above your means! I never dreamed that we would be put in the position of one of us losing our job, but guess what? It did happen! This is how the American entrepreneur starts, first with hopeless despair after losing a job, then accepting it and then deciding if it is worth it to go to work for someone else or yourself!



I realize many of you may be disappointed when you get a hankering for ice cream because we have started advertising and not opened up yet but it has given us hope that this business will succeed!! We have worked very hard over the last 6 weeks, researching, writing and re-writing the business plan, looking at properties, finding distributors of products that will lessen our impact on the environment and getting our menu ideas down on paper. There is nothing more exciting than being pumped up about an idea and have 163 other people as excited as we are!!



So, please be patient...we will get there and it will be worth the wait!!

The Beginning

Well, a rainy Labor Day seemed like a great day to start blogging about our shop and it's roots. So, here it goes!!

This year has been a whopping wake up call for Joe and me.  We have been married for 10 years and have had children prior to our marriage and essentially are like the Brady bunch!  As a couple, we have 6 children together, Ashlee, who is the oldest who lives in Massachusetts, then Andy who lives in Colorado, Austin lives in Georgia with his mom, JD who lives with us and Bronson and Madison who we share custody of. We had been working on our plans for the summer to go to Joe's daughter’s wedding which was set for July 30th in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  The best part about planning this vacation was that I grew up in Massachusetts and have 3/4th of my family there.    We decided that since there would be at least 5 of us going from Alabama that we should drive up there and not try to pay the cost of flying.  We had tentatively planned this for about 10 days with 4 days total driving and so Bronson and Madison could get back in time for Aggie Band Camp. 

One Saturday morning in May, I was walking on the walking trail at the lake and had left my husband at home about to go to work.  I was listening to my music and caught a glimpse of someone walking toward me that I thought was Joe.  I took my ear buds out of my ears and strained to see this handsome guy walking slowly with his hands in his pockets toward me.  Panic and fear came over me after I realized it was him like a wave with thoughts of everything in our lives that could go wrong. As I increased my pace towards him, my mind raced.....who died? What’s happened? Why is he not at work?! As I reached him, I could see the defeat in his face. "I lost my job."

Fast-forward.  We decided that we could finagle Joe staying at home with the kids for the summer and look for a job and my gracious boss said I could take a few more days off to head to Massachusetts earlier so that we would have time to spend with my mother and my step-daughter and do some fun stuff.  We took two days to drive up (19 hour total drive!!) and spent the next two weeks enjoying the time with our families, which included a trip (actually 3-4 trips) to Kimball's Farm.

Kimball's Farm is the epicenter of ice cream to me.  They have been around since before I was born and give generous heaping scoops of ice cream that don't even fit on a cone...and it is SO good! Today it is like an amusement park with amazing food, and peole come from miles around just to taste the ice cream.  I worked at a smaller ice cream shop when I was 17-19 and basically grew up an ice cream lover...!!

As we traveled to Salem, Gloucester, Cape Cod and Boston...my children seemed to notice how many ice cream shops there are in Massachusetts.  Madison commented during one car ride, "Mom, there are as many ice cream shops here as there are Mexican restaurants at home!!  We need one at home, maybe that's what Joe can do for a job!"

Hence, the idea.  We discussed it at length on our long drive home and Joe has been working on our business plan and looking for suppliers, organic dairy farms, and places to open a shop since we got home.  We still have a lot of work to do before opening, but are committed to make this work.  Since we have told people that we were going to do this, the response has been completely overwhelmingly positive!!  We didn't realize that Southerners love ice cream just as much!

Thank you for your support and stay tuned for more information!!