Success is a Dish Best Served Cold: How Ben Van Leeuwen Found his Passion in Ice Cream

Olivia Carville: Hello. And please join me in welcoming Ben Van Leeuwen, co-founder and chief executive at Van Leeuwen Ice Cream to TriNet PeopleForce.

Ben Leeuwen: Hi.

Olivia: Hi. Thanks for joining me today.

Ben: Thanks for having me.

Olivia: Well, I’m really looking forward to this conversation. And I’m wondering, can we just kick off with what got you into ice cream?

Ben: It started my senior year of high school on a warm April afternoon.

Olivia: I love this already.

Ben: I was about to graduate. I needed a summer job and I saw an ad in the newspaper. I grew up in Connecticut. And it said, “Drive an ice cream truck. Earn $500 a week.” I responded to the advertisement. I ended up renting a beat up old 1960-something Good Humor ice cream truck and running that selling chocolate eclair bars, strawberry shortcake bars, SpongeBob SquarePants bars in Connecticut. And I did that for three summers. So that was my foray into the ice cream business, actually.

Olivia: And how did that develop to you deciding that you wanted to actually start your own ice cream truck?

Ben: So after doing that for two summers, I said, “I do not want to go back to college. I don’t like school. I never liked school.” I like it now. I would want to go to school now very much so. But as a kid I was diagnosed with ADD. Whether that’s a bad thing or good thing, who knows? Maybe it makes me more entrepreneurial. But I think because of that, I had this complex that school is something that’s hard for me, so I don't like it. So the idea of not going back to school was very exciting.

So I saved up money after my second summer of doing this truck. I saved $40,000 and I took a trip. I bought a one-way ticket to Milan with no plan and I said, “I'm going to come back when my money runs out.” And I was away for nine months. I went all over Europe, all over Asia. And what struck me the most about traveling was the food and going to places like Southern Europe, like Southeast Asia where good food was normal. It wasn’t special.

And that really impacted me because I grew up in a place America in the 80s and 90s where good food was fringe. You were a foodie. To talk about ingredients and where they were from and processes was really, really unusual. And then being exposed to places like Italy and Thailand where almost everything’s just good. And where in Italy it’s normal to talk about where your olive oil’s from really impacted me.

So, I ended up finishing college. And I grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. So I thought, okay, in order to have a good life, I should probably try to get a job in finance. But I had a 2.9 GPA, no internships, just a job working on an ice cream truck for three summers. So I called my sister who worked at Goldman Sachs and ended up starting her own firm. And I said, “Jenny, I'd like a job in finance like yours and I'd like to make a lot of money.” And she’s like, "Yeah, I can’t help you, Ben.”

So as I was going to a job interview, not one that she set up, I saw a Mister Softee truck on the streets of New York. And again, it was April, but this was four years later, about to finish college. And I said, “Huh, why don’t we do another ice cream truck, but this time serve really good ice cream?”

And this sort of brings it back to that trip traveling all over the world because we thought ice cream is something that even expensive ice cream isn't that expensive. So it was this vehicle to bring really good food. The best of something, right? Finding the best pistachios and the best chocolates and creating a base formula that was really high quality with a lot of good stuff.

Olivia: And toothsome.

Ben: Toothsome. A lot of egg yolks, a lot of cream. And delivering that in this really accessible format through the ice cream truck at a price point that, again, it’s not cheap, but it’s also something that most people can afford. So as our way of trying to make really good food, trying to make artisanal food not special.

Olivia: Right. I think a lot of people in the audience and who are watching virtually can relate to the idea of being in college and feeling like getting that fancy finance internship is what you need to do to get on the right career path. I’m wondering if you can talk to us about at what point in your life did you realize that the path you were on was actually the right one for you?

Ben: Sure. I've always loved food because memorable sensory experiences are what sort of moved me particularly with food. So doing something that you love, which we always hear, just makes sense.

I think growing up in Connecticut, there’s this puritan culture where things shouldn’t be easy. You have to suffer. If it feels good, if it’s fun, that’s probably not what’s going to make you a living. But I think saying, “Wait a minute, I can do something I really like.” In fact, if I do something I really like, I’m probably going to be even more successful because it’s something that I’m going to be really excited about and that excitement’s going to find its way into the product and the work and the way we run the company.

So I actually don't remember the moment where I said, okay, I'm going to do this, not that, but it felt really good just to say, you actually can do something you love. Within reason, right? I mean, people buy ice cream. It’s not a long shot. We knew we’d sell at least something.

Olivia: And when you started out creating the business, what changed from what you thought the life of an entrepreneur was going to be like and what the reality was?

Ben: So we started with one ice cream truck. We bought a used post office truck on eBay for $3,000. We retrofitted it into an ice cream truck and we produced ice cream at a small factory in upstate New York because we didn’t have the capital to build our own plant. We started the business with $60,000.

The first year was exciting, but challenging. I mean, resource-wise we weren’t three Harvard MBAs, leaving school, raising $30 million bucks and immediately having this incredible foundation to grow a business. We had a beat-up old truck and we parked it in a lot in Maspeth, Queens with huge puddles that ducks lived in. And there were stray cats all over.

So I fantasized at that point about the business being bigger because I knew or I believed that as the business got bigger, it would become easier. So it was, okay, we have one truck. When we have three trucks, we can afford our own parking lot and then we’ll be able to store cups. And each stage that we got to things got easier. But as those things got easier, new challenges arose.

Olivia: Because your expectations got higher or for what reason?

Ben: Just the nature of doing business.

Olivia: Okay.

Ben: When you grow, the more that’s happening in the world, the more that can go wrong and the more that will go wrong. And that’s what running a business is. I mean, I shared this quote with you the other day, but my dad always says, “If it was easy, everybody would do it.”

But a huge revelation for me in something that’s made me happier as an entrepreneur and as a CEO was about five years ago realizing that this smooth sailing never starts. No matter how big you get or no matter how many trucks we have or stores we have or how much of our manufacturing we outsource versus do ourselves, different challenges will arise. And for me, coming to terms with that was really liberating as opposed to waiting for that day when I could just focus on the easy stuff, which for me is product development and store design.

And I say that’s the easy stuff because it’s what I enjoy the most. Dealing with problems is always a little bit stressful, but I think if you accept that problems will always come. And that’s literally what growing a business and what’s succeeding in a business is it’s rising to those challenges and figuring out how to overcome them and just not giving up.

I never ever for a moment said, “I'm going to give up.” I think out of fear because I thought, what else am I going to do? I’ve worked so hard on this. I need to make a living on this.

With that said, there’ve been so many dark moments where when things are really hard, like a ceiling at our factory collapsing two years ago at the end of the pandemic or at the end of the start of the pandemic, after a few months when we’re just starting to get going and the whole place is flooding and it’s 10 p.m. on a Friday. And I'm just like, “Fuck. Why is this worth it? Is this worth it?”

Olivia: Yeah.

Ben: But I think that’s what makes it work when you just keep going.

Olivia: Okay.

Ben: And then managing that while also staying laser focused on the core of what we do, which is delivering a memorable sensory experience to the customer. So constantly questioning the product we’re putting out, the innovation we’re doing and making sure that it’s what people want.

Olivia: One of the things that I was really taken of when we first connected and spoke, which was just last week, to talk about what we're going to discuss here in front of you all today, I asked Ben, “What do you want to talk about?” And he came back to me and said, “Look, no one wants to hear a success story. I’ve been to conferences and success stories are boring. We want to talk about the hardship. We want to hear about the challenges, the times when it was really difficult when you did think about giving up.” So let’s talk about some of those moments and you know what you did to push through them rather than throwing in the towel.

Ben: Sure. 2012, December 20th. Corporate team was myself, my brother, Peter Van Leeuwen, my business partner, and Laura O'Neill, my other business partner who’s my best friend. Financial controls were me sporadically looking at our QuickBooks and at our bank balances.

Somehow, I deduced that we had three days of runway left on cash flow, no financing. We still have never not made payroll. We had never not made payroll then. So gearing up for Christmas, New Year’s, Hanukkah, everything my friends are going upstate and I’m like, “Oh, we need cash and we need it now.” But we needed three or $400,000, but I think right then we needed $7,000.

So first step was like, we all drove around to every single scoop shop we had and ice cream truck and just emptied the cash registers, attempted to collect AR that we had outstanding with small local restaurants, but this was hundreds of thousand dollars.

So quick Google. Found a loan shark. In 48 hours, closed on $400,000 of debt for 44% interest. And we did it. And we survived and we paid it back. And it absolutely sucked because before we closed on that debt and even closing on that debt and having to pay that interest was absolutely horrifying.

And another one was I ran a factory, a small factory, when we stopped outsourcing in Greenpoint without a permit. I just didn't get around to getting the permit and I wasn’t sure if I needed a state permit. And this was 10, 12 years ago.

And then one day someone was like, “Hey Ben, where are you manufacturing this, from the department of Agriculture?” And I was like, “Oh, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.” And they're like, “But you don't have a permit with us.” And I was like, “Oh, we have one with the city of New York.” And they were like, “Oh, can we see it?” And I was like, “Oh, yeah, yeah. I'll get it to you tomorrow.”

So Laura had a connection to the health department. She was like, “Hey, can we get an inspection?” They were like, “Are you open yet?” We're like, “No.” So we hired a cold truck and we unloaded our entire factory in the middle of the night into that truck making it look like we had never opened.

Olivia: Oh my gosh.

Ben: And the health inspector arrived at 8 a.m. and he walked in the front door, looked around. Didn't look in any of the walk-ins or anything, so we didn’t need to unload anything. And he is like, “Here's your temporary permit.” And we were totally fine.

Olivia: Well, that was lucky.

Ben: Yeah, very lucky.

Olivia: One of the things you mentioned backstage that I also loved is that you still scoop ice cream in your stores as well. Why do you do that?

Ben: Because I learn so much about the business and how we can innovate and improve by doing that. So A, you're interacting with customers, right? So it’s one thing, looking at the data and being like, “We sell this many scoops of vanilla, this many scoops of strawberry. That flavor’s better.” It’s very different when you see how people react to things and you see what they’re ordering.

It's also inspiring. The core of what we do is service, it’s hospitality. And as the CEO, if I am doing what would traditionally be seen as my job, which might be sitting in an office looking at financials, thinking about future financing, expansion, growth strategy, I'm not touching that. And you’re getting away from that.

And if I don’t go in that often enough, as cliche as this sounds like, I forget the point of what we’re doing. And it can be a little bit depressing because that is the point of what we do to serve people delicious ice cream that makes them feel good.

Olivia: And you’ve mentioned some of the hurdles or hiccups that you’ve faced, some of those hard times. Can you describe how you diversify into other markets, like you sell vegan products now, and how you come to learn about all these different areas of the business with limited resources?

Ben: So we added vegan to our product line about 12 years ago—so two or three years into the business, because again, in those days we worked in the stores a lot. So we really heard the customers and understood what they want. And a lot of people were asking for vegan. So we said, “Let's do vegan.”

For the vegan, because we had already been making ice cream, our standard was really, really high for what good tasting ice cream was. So actually to develop that product, I went home and spent a few weeks at home tinkering with cocoa butter, cashews, coconut cream and a lot of plant-based ingredients trying to match the experience of the dairy ice cream.

Olivia: So you make it yourself at home?

Ben: Well, I mean, test batches, yeah.

Olivia: Yeah, yeah.

Ben: ... in those days. Now we have a very small R&D room at our factory in Greenpoint. But in terms of market research, there was none then. It was purely gut and going off what the customers in our stores in those days only in New York City were asking for.

Olivia: We had a poll for the audience asking, as your business has grown and expanded, has it become easier or harder? And 72% of the audience responded saying it has been harder. I assume that’s something you can relate to.

Ben: Yeah. I mean, on the surface it’s easier. I can take a week off and do nothing and the business still runs completely. The difference is I’m a lot more stressed when I take a week off now and I actually don't. I’ll take a week off, but I’ll check in constantly. But I think that’s my own making.

I think that’s just any entrepreneur. You have ambition and you want things to be a certain way and you want them to be really good. And the more operations that are happening, the more you’re going to think about every operation. So in that sense, it’s harder. I also think it becomes more challenging because a problem that occurs on a $1 million business versus a $100 million business, the stakes are a lot higher when you’re doing $100 million.

Olivia: Of course. So you’ve gone from one ice cream truck to three ice cream trucks to one brick and mortar store to three to now 33. Is there ever going to be a time that you think you’re going to take your foot off the accelerator and feel like, “I made it?”

Ben: Yeah. For us, as long as there’s white space in the market for this really good ice cream, we want to grow it as much as we possibly can. So what does that mean to us? Finding markets that don't have a product like this that are missing this luxury ice cream, which to us means high butter fat, tons of eggs and exceptional ingredients like Valrhona chocolate and pistachios from Bronte, Sicily and northwest totem strawberries that are ripened in the sun in the volcanic soils of Oregon and blending that into these bases. As long as there’s openings for that, I think we want to keep going.

But I guess your question was more will we ever just feel like, cool we did it? I think no. And I think that’s sad. And I think that’s sort of human greed and ambition and ego, right?

Olivia: Right.

Ben: That I can’t just step back and say, this is awesome. Because if 15 years ago someone had said, “Hey, if in 15 years you’re doing this amount of revenue and have 30 stores going on 50 and are in 10,000 wholesale doors, will you just be the happiest person on earth?” I would say, “Absolutely.” And I’m not not happy, but I actually don’t feel happier than I did then because of that.

Olivia: Right. I mean, that’s quite depressing, isn’t it?

Ben: Maybe. Maybe a little, yeah.

Olivia: Do you think that there’s a way that as an entrepreneur, you can try and celebrate the wins to just sit back, take a breath, and be like, “Damn this has been hard. And look at all that I've achieved?”

Ben: Well, a big part of that is being in the stores and also being around our team because we work hard to make a place that is nice to be at because life is now. Our slogan is “a life without anything good is bad.” We make good ice cream with good ingredients that makes you feel good. And we try to imbue everything we do with that sort of mission.

And there are times when within our stores and even at the office with our corporate team I feel that and I say, “This is pretty cool.” We've put a team together who’s helped to create an environment that gives people a way to make a living. And people are generally pretty happy. And it’s a respectful place and it’s a nice place. And in those moments, I think more than any others, I say, “This is really nice.” And then in the stores when there’s people eating ice cream with their families or friends or spouses smiling, I'm like, "This is really cool."

Olivia: So you’ve now got, as I mentioned, 33 brick and mortar stores in seven states in the U.S. If we could rewind back to the college kid selling ice cream out of the Good Humor ice cream truck, what would you want to tell him? What advice would you want to give him?

Ben: Yeah. I would say enjoy every moment. Don’t be stressed. I mean, health is everything, right? So I tell myself that now. And focus on what you’re good at. And then very tactically.

For the first six years of our growth, we obsessed over trying to make our ice cream shops winter proof by adding coffee and pastries. And we thought, we’re going to do it. We’re going to do it. The better we make the coffee, the better we make the pastries, the better we’re going to do there. And we’re going to do what no one’s ever done, which is create this non-seasonally affected ice cream business. Nobody’s ever done that, right?

It took us like 10 years to realize that generally people will see you for something, for one thing. For us, we were an ice cream shop. No matter how good our pastries were or how good our coffee was people were going to go to Blue Bottle or Starbucks for their coffee and Van Leeuwen for their ice cream.

So the advice would be focus on not one thing, but focus on the core of what you’re trying to do and get really, really good at that. Because I actually think we wasted a lot of time and I think that that learning curve was too slow for us.

Olivia: Right. So having the confidence to say, “What we have is a great idea. And let’s stick with this idea rather than trying to diversify in all these different ways and being okay at all of them.” But you want to be great at one thing, right?

Ben: Right. And almost immediately we saw when we started pulling the coffee and pastry program back, it allowed more mine share to be focused on the core of the business, which was ice cream. And our overall revenue per store started increasing, which is counterintuitive. You take products away, you think revenue’s going to go down. But you’re creating a more confident business model, right? You’re saying, “We sell ice cream. We're really good at it. We’re obsessed with it. And if you want good ice cream, come here.”

Olivia: I’m conscious of the fact that we only have a few minutes left. And I've got a few rapid-fire questions I want to throw your way.

Ben: All right.

Olivia: What is the most poignant piece of advice you’ve received as an entrepreneur that’s really stuck with you?

Ben: The most poignant piece of advice I’ve received as an entrepreneur that’s really stuck with me? It’s actually what you said.

Olivia: What I said?

Ben: It is to celebrate the wins which we talk about a lot. Which you could also say as just stay positive, be happy, focus on the positive, because that is so powerful. And the ripple effect of focusing on something positive while still being aware of things that need attention and that aren’t going well will just create a happier workplace and probably inspire people more to do a really good job.

Olivia: Well, that leads me to my next question. Given we are speaking to a huge group of small to medium-sized business owners and leaders of the business world, what advice would you give to them, to those that are just starting out, who maybe have a lot of mistakes in front of them, to not get disheartened and to keep going?

Ben: I think be humble. And by that, I mean have a healthy fear. Because business is hard and you don’t want to run out of cash in a way that you can’t get more capital and keep the business going.

And for us, that fear is what has allowed us to survive. We’ve always had grand visions of growth, but we’ve balanced it with a fear that everything will go to shit and crumble. And sort of having that I think is really important. Having that humility and saying, “Okay, we’ve got to focus on growing, but we’ve also got to protect ourselves,” is really important.

And then one challenges arise just take 10 deep breaths or do your version of taking 10 deep breaths and saying, “It's just ice cream.” Or if your business is at all similar to ours and it’s not a life or death thing for people saying that, “This is okay. It’s going to be okay. I’m lucky to have the opportunity to do this.” And I think almost putting a positive spin on those challenges can help you get through them.

Olivia: Okay. Two final questions.

Ben: Okay.

Olivia: Where do you find inspiration for your flavors?

Ben: Eating out.

Olivia: Okay.

Ben: So I went to Jamaica, Queens to a Sri Lankan grocery store the other day that had a little kitchen attached to it and had absolutely incredible food, savory food. And then they had something that I’ve never tried called milk toffee, which was condensed milk that was mixed with even more sugar and then caramelized and turned into hard candy.

Olivia: Oh my god.

Ben: And I was like, “That was so good. This would be amazing in ice cream.” So just being out in the world exposing myself to other foods.

Olivia: Okay. My last question is, how many ice creams do you eat a week and what's your favorite flavor?

Ben: On average, I eat like six ice creams a week.

Olivia: Six a week?

Ben: Yeah.

Olivia: Is that one a day?

Ben: Yeah, about one a day.

Olivia: That’s impressive.

Ben: And my favorite flavor would be our honeycomb ice cream. Sweet cream base folded with chunks of caramelized aerated, tapioca and cane sugar.

Olivia: Oh my gosh. Okay, audience, you heard it here. Go to Ben Van Leeuwen's Ice Cream store and get the honeycomb flavor.

Thank you so much, Ben. It was great talking to you.

Ben: Thank you.

Olivia: I really appreciate your time.