Wholesalin' It

(Written on Mike's behalf by Amber, AKA wifey-poo.)

Mike's been working his little tail off and has made some great progress with wholesale. We're really hoping to build our wholesale orders to keep us strong on rainy days and over snowy winters. We've already lined up Bhan Thai - who was already serving Glacier, but now will be our account so they don't have to drive to Boulder anymore. Our second was Patsy's, who has a gelato case in their candy store on 21st street. And Mike just lined up a third that I'm very excited about.

Garden of the Gods Gourmet will now be serving pints of our ice cream in their take-out freezers. They put in their first order today of key lime, tiramisu, vanilla, and coffee. Garden of the Gods Gourmet is a great catering place in Old Colorado City. Mike and I fell in love with it because of their incredible samples and hospitality. We've often made a lunch of their cheese stuffed focaccia or curry chicken salad. And for treats like anniversary or Valentine's dinners, Mike will often treat me with a Garden of the Gods Gourmet spread.

But by far my favorite is their desserts - pear bread pudding with bourbon caramel sauce, peach cobbler, tiramisu...Need I say more? And now if you buy one of their desserts or dinner entrees, you can accompany it with a pint of gelato or ice cream. Great job getting the gig, Mike!

Today Mike was on his way to Mr. Biggs, a local entertainment center (bowling alley, laser tag, birthday parties, etc.) to talk to them about using our ice cream. But first he stopped at the bank. He gets to talking to the man in line in front of him, and who should it be but the man who organizes birthday parties for Mr. Biggs! Mike asked him if he'd be interested in serving a birthday cake ice cream, and he was very interested. They traded cards and will be talking soon. Pretty cool, huh?

So three weeks in and three wholesale accounts down. I'm excited to see what the fourth will be!

2 weeks and going strong

Hello everyone! I've been so busy running the store I've hardly had time to breathe. We launched successfully on July 1st. We've had various equipment malfunctions and other hiccups that we had to iron out, but everything is coming together and it's all settling down into a nice rhythm.

We had the biggest opening ever for a Glacier store, according to Mark, Glacier's founder. And the biggest opening week ever. Our numbers have been exceptionally good, and word is starting to get around town that there's an amazing new ice cream store in town you just have to try. I've seen tons of repeat customers just in these first couple weeks.

We're just doing some of our first promotions, tomorrow we're partnering with a clothing store in our center that is doing a radio event, and we've got some more events coming up. Everyone who's tried our ice cream has been blown away.

We've also done some of our first wholesale sales. A tub or two for a golf tournament (also a promotional event). A number of tubs for a restaurant. There's another major customer in the works, we just have to prove ourselves in a tasting, but I'm confident about the result. We just had the people from Patsy's Candies over today (they have a gelato case in their store), and they were completely blown away by our gelato. They said yes right on the spot. We're knocking socks off left and right.

Our employees are doing a great job and I've had lots of good feedback from customers about them. I'm very happy with who we hired. And we're cranking out the ice cream. Good thing, too, because our customers are devouring it. We're already making as much as an average ice cream store, and we're just starting to build our reputation.

It's been a great beginning. Here's to Glacier, the future #1 ice cream store of the Pikes Peak region!

p.s. On a side note, we're getting our take-out freezer stocked with pints; we made our first batch of cakes; our coffee is delicious and people would no doubt appreciate it even more if they could take their eyes off our gelato for a moment; and we've started stocking some of our side items like candy, tea and coffee to brew at home, and baked goods from the Dutch bakery.

Our Soft Open

Today was it! Our "soft" opening, which turned out to not be very soft at all. We hadn't advertised/marketed that we were open today other than the banner over our store. But it was packed in here all day. We talked to Mark in Boulder, who said our sales on opening day were the best in Glacier history.

We did face a number of challenges along the way - the point of sale systems weren't working for the first two hours we were open. Mike used this as an opportunity to win over new customers by giving away free ice cream cones until the system was up and working.

We had various other equipment glitches, but the staff handled them well, and hopefully the customers still had a great experience.

Because the first day was so huge, we burned through far more gelato than we had planned. So now we're up late making gelato! Good night!

Preview Walk Through

The contractors have been busy getting our space ready. Right now, the walls are painted, the bathrooms are tiled, and they are in the process of staining the concrete. The kitchen should be finished this week, so we'll get to start setting up shop.

Here's a short video to let you see how it's looking.

Craziness

Hello everyone! Sorry I haven't had time to post anything for a while. I have been recording the process, but I've been so busy I haven't been able to write about it. Almost all our purchasing from decor to equipment is completed. The space is coming together, in fact they've painted most of it and have our walk-in fridge and freezer in. The kitchen is mostly done. The fireplace and bookshelves look great!

I'm also very excited about the people we've hired. Our head production worker, Steven, is an industry veteran with 13 years of restaurant work under his belt. Our servers are a great bunch of people. Most are in college (many at UCCS), a couple are recent UCCS graduates, and we also have a couple of high school seniors from a nearby school. We have a brother and sister team on our staff, which should be fun (it's ok, they get along great). We've also got someone who is studying culinary arts.

I spent several days in Boulder last week working in the stores up there, mostly making ice cream and working with their managers to plan our store operations. Everything is going great, and everything seems to be on schedule. Every day there are a hundred things I need to get done, so I should really run and get back to work! I have meetings to go to, T-shirts to buy, supply lists to send out to vendors, packages to pick up, trainings to schedule, marketing materials to write, deliveries to arrange, accounts to update, and a Point of Sale system to program. Bye bye!

Progress!

Afternoon, everyone. It's a bright, sunny day outside. I'm pleased to announce that all our major equipment is now taken care of. I just need to pick up a couple minor things like a microwave and a blender and we'll have all our appliances. My goodness but we just did out part to stimulate the economy. I still need to buy lots of little things like office supplies and cups and napkins and smallware like that, and some decor, but all the big stuff that makes the store work is wrapped up. I've got a couple new pictures. The first is the techinical drawing showing our sign in place on the store. Sorry it's not a good picture. Bad lighting conditions.

Construction continues at the store. The exterior walls have the sheetrock up, and the interior walls are mostly framed. You can actually see the layout of the store a bit now. Here's a picture of Amber, looking back into the semi-private seating area (with the bathrooms behind). The restaurant going in next to us just finished putting up the plywood exterior of their walls. It looks like most of the seating will be on the side opposite us, which is fine.

My next mountains to conquer are the small supplies purchases, hiring the staff for the store (any takers?), buying and setting up the sound system, and designing our menu displays (any graphic designers interested in giving them a bit of a jazzing up?). I also need to find an artist to paint a small mural on a wall above some cabinets. I've seen some samples from a number of artists locally; if anyone knows any good (not too expensive) artists who would be interested in painting a fun little mural for us (I already have the content and style basically worked out), drop me a line.

I'm going to be spending a lot of time in Boulder this next month, working with the stores up there, making sure everything is ready and we've got all our procedures figured out and making sure employee training goes well. As far as I can tell, everything is on track. I've been reading through all the manuals for the different parts of the business. I'm eager to get all the little prep work out of the way and get out there and start making and selling ice cream. Speaking of which, I have a number of distributors I need to call to set up our accounts.

Before I sign off, I'd like to take a moment to say a few words about our coffee roaster, Colorado Coffee Merchants. Eric, who owns the business, used to be a firefighter, and roasting is basically a hobby that grew and grew and grew until he became one of the premier coffee providers in the region. If you stop by their coffee shop/roasting facility during the week, you can see them roast the beans while you wait for your latte. It's pretty fun. I'm also glad to say we found a local (Colorado) company to provide our teas. Most of them are organic and a good number are fair trade, if you're looking for that kind of product. We'll be making drip coffees, espresso drinks, freshly brewed hot and iced teas, and some unique drink items (chai cider, espresso over gelato; things like that). So feel free to come by, pull up a chair next to the fireplace, pull a book off the bookshelf, and enjoy some cold gelato and hot espresso while you look out at Pulpit Rock.

Catalogs and Gelato

I remember complaining at length to Amber about the fact that I couldn't find a stainless steel mixing cup to make milkshakes in. Not in any store I went to. I'm sure she remembers it too. This was a long-standing grievance. Now I know where to get that kind of stuff. From restaurant supply catalogs.

I've got a pile of catalogs about a foot and a half high in my office right now, and I've been flipping my way through hundreds of pages of glasses, plates, ketchup dispensers, furniture, appliances, and cookware. The catalogue in front of me now has over 270 pages. It's enough to melt your brain. I've devised a clever system of different colored shapes I draw around items I'm interested in, and different symbols I mark the catalogues with to classify them. If anyone needs a meat slicer or a salad bar, let me know.

Everything is going great with the lead-up to our opening. All our major equipment is ordered now, and our spare bedroom is becoming a storage facility for various small to medium sized appliances and other items. I had a meeting to with our architect to go over our outdoor signs, and I'm really happy with how they turned out. We also went over the colors and samples, and I'm pretty happy with them too. I let our architect be my guide in choosing colors. Coordinating a whole store can be a bit tough, so I'm focusing on the decor more than the paint colors. Here are some pictures showing the glass tile that will form a border below our fireplace mantle and some samples showing our paint colors and the wood paneling that we'll be using on some walls and in a few other places (such as the front of our ice cream cabinets and the coffee bar). Oh, and we have a wall with wallpaper, so that's in there too. I've also put in a pic of our pendant lights. We'll have 8 of these, hung at different heights, three over the coffee area, 5 in the semi-private room. each piece is mouth-blown and original, so they'll all be unique.

Meanwhile, construction goes ahead. Keep your fingers crossed that we meet our deadline. Or rather that the contractors do. They're putting up sheetrock on the outer walls and framing the interior walls now.

That's your construction update for today. I've got to shop for office supplies and a water filter next. Before I go, though, let me give a (somewhat) brief answer to a question I've been asked a lot.

What is gelato? Gelato is an Italian style of ice cream. Gelato is frozen very quickly in small batches compared to ice cream. Because of the nature of gelato and how it is made and what it's made of, you only get the best results if your gelato is fresh (made on location) and it's made using European-standard equipment (which we have, but a lot of people won't spend the money for). Gelato contains less air than traditional American ice cream, but it also contains less fat (because it's made with low fat milk) and less sugar. It is traditionally flavored with fresh fruit purees, nut pastes, cocoa, and sometimes small amounts of chocolate flakes and small confections. It's also usually served at a warmer temperature. It's very light and creamy, as a result of all the above, but has a very intense flavor.

The picture above is of a gelato case in Italy. Gelato (and making it look cool) is an art there. We're trying to bring a taste of that experience to Colorado Springs. I'm not sure I can make it look quite like that (and usually you only can when your turnover rate is pretty high), but I'll do my best. I can give you the taste experience, though. Don't settle for gelato that has been shipped in from afar or that isn't fresh or that was made with machines that don't meet the European standards or that was flavored with syrups instead of real flavorings. For those of you who want to know some of the technical details of why this is all important, just read the wikipedia entry.

The First Tasting

Today was a big day. Today, we introduced Glacier Ice Cream at University Village (which the COO of UCCS tells me the students are just calling "the Village" and so shall I from now on) for the first time to a select group of Colorado Springs residents. They held a luncheon at the Village for a big organization of about 80 commercial real estate brokers. John Winsor, who is the agent I've been working with, talked about the center for a bit, and then the keynote speaker was the COO of the University of Colorado (pictured above), talking about the school and how they've changed and developed and how University Village coming in has benefited them and their students and what they're planning to do with their land on the other side of Nevada (an events center, sports facilities, a performing arts center, new dorms, etc). It's been the fastest growing university in Colorado for a decade now, apparently, and they're pretty excited about their growth.

My job was just to sit while John told everyone about our business and serve everyone bowls of ice cream afterward. John helped me scoop, since it got a bit nuts and I was so busy explaining what gelato was and telling everyone what all the flavors they could pick from were. Now that's a supportive landlord. I'm already using them as manual labor. Speaking of manual labor, I dropped by the site and they're starting to frame the interior walls. The frame for the fireplace wall is already mostly in.

The people at the luncheon were VERY impressed by our ice cream and expressed their enthusiam for coming back with their families, trying more gelato (for many it was their first time), and trying more flavors. Key lime pie and nutella were both big hits. They wiped out the milk and double dark chocolate. It was a lot of fun. I tried strawberry sorbet for the first time (with 800 flavors there are still a lot of firsts out there for me) and it was great. So fruity and so fresh, but still very rich and creamy for something without dairy. I mixed mine with a little Valrhona chocolate sorbet for a dairy-free chocolate covered strawberry treat. I also got to meet the other major partner for the Village, Tom Kohn. He seemed like a decent fellow. Chipolte, one of our neighbors, was also very helpful in letting me use their fridge and ice to cool my ice cream supply.

I'm working on getting a sign up next. I sent some people out to the site to take measurements and pictures and figure out a plan. Our name is so long, we're probably going to shorten it for the exterior signs and just put the full name on a logo sign on the tower. In other news, I talked to our POS supplier and put together an order, I received our back office computer, I figured out a cheaper way to get ahold of some of our key ingredients by forming a partnership with another local business, I talked to a merchant services provider, I made an appointment with a sound system provider, I created some coupons to give out at my pre-opening marketing events, and I brought home about 8 chipolte burritos that were left over from the luncheon. Whew.

Let me reward you for that tirade with some pictures of Patsy's and our store. First the exterior.

Then Amber and I inside talking to Mike, the son-in-law of the owners. It's a family business, and they're great people with a really cool story (involving Africa). They have another son named Mike, and I'm Mike, so it's all a big Mike festival when I visit. You should see the enormous chocolate bars they use to make their candy. 20-30 pounds. You could knock someone out with one of them, and they have dozens.

And here's a recent exterior shot of our store. If you look close you'll see me talking to Amber and her dad. The restaurant next door is coming together fast. I can already make out the outline their roof will follow, thanks to the beams.

To close out the day, I'll regale you with one last story. My coffee supplier contacted me a little while ago to let me know he'd been looking for a good deal on the espresso machine he'd recommended, and he'd found one (and one only), but sadly informed me that it had been snapped up. I told him it was ok. Luckily, I happened to know the guy who had bought it. A fine fellow called Mike Van Schooneveld. So, we've got our espresso machine. For half the retail price. Score! Here's something for all you readers to comment on: what kind of chai do you prefer, the spicier, more tea-like chai or the more milkshake-like chai? One usually comes as a dry mix of spices or as a liquid concentrate of those spices, whereas the other usually comes as a powder or as a creamy concentrated mix. Me, I like the milkshake-like vanilla chai, lots of flavor but fairly sweet and creamy. Which do you prefer?

Tasting Results

It was a busy weekend. I drank more coffee than at any other time in my life, plus some tea, all in the name of Glacier. Now I'm back home watching all these darn birds stealing the coconut lining from my window planter for their nests.

Today I finalized some major purchases: our dipping cabinets and our walk-in fridge. I've already purchased our batch freezer (which makes the ice cream), and now I'm working on our espresso machine.

This morning I did a demo of our point-of-sale software. I was pretty happy with it. I'll probably pull the trigger on it and the hardware in a day or so. And I had a meeting at our location with a guy out of Denver to do some planning for the furniture and whatnot. While hanging around I had some people drop by and ask me what was going in the space. They seemed pretty excited when they heard about Glacier. Be sure to check out tomorrow's blog. I'm doing my first tasting for a luncheon at the center we're going into, and I'll have some other fun news.

I also tried Glacier's praline caramel crunch for the first time today. I didn't like pralines until recently, when I started buying these Post cereals I like a lot. Oh My Gosh! It was INSANE! Like pecan pie in ice cream form.

After processing all the products I've tested for our store, I'm very pleased to announce that we're partering with Colorado Coffee Merchants and Patsy's Original Candies for our coffee, tea, and candy. Both are local companies, with their products produced right here in town. This will be an important part of the store, especially during the holidays, and we're going to be doing some cross-brand combo products with them that are gonna be really cool.

I'm not a big coffee drinker. Ok, I hate coffee, generally. Even in Hawaii, at the plantation, sampling all their coffees, I hated them all. Luckily I had other people to help me pick. But here's my endorsement. This is a record of the first thoughts to enter my head on drinking the CCM coffee: "Oh. So that's what they mean by 'rich and full-bodied.' Hmm. [sip] I'd drink this."

It's also going to be a lot of fun working with Patsy's. They're a local fixture, and have been or something like 110 years. If you haven't tried their almond toffee, you're missing out. My mouth is actually full of it as I'm typing this. Amazing. So crisp and buttery, such crunchy toasted nuts and rich chocolate. And now I've dropped some on myself. Well, talk to you tomorrow. I've got to change my shirt.

A Day of Samples

Hello again everyone! It's been a busy couple of days for Glacier Ice Cream. I spent most of yesterday in Boulder going over our schedule and collecting materials and information from Mark Mallen, Glacier's founder. Then I ran down to Denver to look at some of our equipment. I'm really excited about the cool display cabinets we're getting. They're really top of the line european-style units. Beautiful!

I was so busy going to meetings today I forgot to eat breakfast and missed lunch. Luckily, I was visiting some of our future wholesale vendors, so I didn't starve entirely. Instead, I had to make it through the day on nothing but chai, coffee, and chocolates. There's this great chocolate maker in town that just opened up. No real retail location yet, just a production facility. My lovely wife Amber met me down there and we took a tour and tried some samples and got to know the people a bit. Then we watched the chocolatier temper the chocolate and start filling the molds for some delicious white chocolate and grand marnier ganache truffles. I'm really excited about the possibilties for this partnership and the chance to offer some top quality european-style chocolate confections to our customers. Keep an eye out for special truffle and coffee and truffle and gelato combos and promotions once we open. Here's a quick (slightly shaky) video of the tempering machines.




We're also doing a coffee tasting this weekend of the various samples we're considering carrying. It should be a lot of fun. I'm not a big coffee drinker, so that fact that some of this coffee tastes great even to me should get you all excited. An "I'd drink this" from me is like a rave review from anyone else. 99% of coffees I won't drink, period.

One of the best things we're doing, in my opinion, is how we're sourcing our products and ingredients. We're going to be bringing the best possible products and ingredients from Colorado and from around the world. Where possible, I'm working to get all fresh and local ingredients for our ice cream. This is the land of Palisade peaches, Rocky Ford melons, Penrose apples, Hotchkiss grapes, and Paonia cherries. I want those to be the flavors you taste when you buy a cone of our fresh seasonal ice creams. We're going to squeeze fresh limes and lemons for our citrus flavors and make fresh caramel and fudge in our own production kitchen. For the rest of our ingredients, we're scouring the world for the best, most flavorful, and exotic ingredients. Nestle chocolate and canned pie cherries are ok, but wait until you try the Valrhona chocolate sorbet or the Amarena cherry ice cream.

That's all for now. Just for fun, I've included a video of me risking my life driving around in our shopping center, for those of you who have yet to visit it. Enjoy!

Welcome to Glacier

Hello everyone and welcome to the inaugural post of the Glacier Homemade Ice Cream and Gelato Blog. I'm Michael Van Schooneveld (for those of you who happened to find this blog on accident and don't know me), and I'm the owner and operator of the new Glacier South Operation (Glacier Southern Colorado? or maybe Southern Colorado Glacier?). Anyway. I'm very proud to be bringing this great local brand to the Pikes Peak area. A chicken in every pot and a cone in every hand, that's my motto. If you've never heard of us before, click on the link above to check out the website.

I'll take some time to delve into all the things that make Glacier great later, but for now let me just give you a bit of background and tell you what's going on now.

Glacier Homemade Ice Cream and Gelato was founded in Boulder, CO by its creator Mark Mallen. Any chance you get to stop by any of the five stores in and around Boulder, take it.

As for me, my whole family is a bit crazy for ice cream. It's in our blood. Literally. I'm pretty sure most of us register at least 5% ice cream content in our veins at any given moment. My own grandmother, who lived in Denver, had a bowl every night.

My wife and I used to live in Longmont, while I was going to school in Boulder, and that's when we discovered Glacier. Imagine our joy when a Glacier opened right in Longmont itself. Here's a picture of me visiting that happy place. In winter. Probably for the third time that week. Did I mention it's the best ice cream store I've ever been to?

So, naturally, I'm excited to be bringing Glacier Ice Cream to Colorado Springs. We'll be offering fresh homemade ice cream and gelato in our store, plus sorbets, candy, chocolate, coffee, loose leaf teas, fresh baked pastries, and more! Our brand new location is set to open in just a couple months, with a grand launch event planned for the weekend of July 4th.

You can get to us from almost anywhere in the city in two shakes of a lamb's tail, at the new University Village retail center on North Nevada (just north of Garden of the Gods/Austin Bluffs), the same development as the new Costco, Kohl's, and Lowe's. We're on the left hand side of the main entrance, directly across from Smashburger. Here's a picture from a couple months ago that I edited our logo and name into, to give you an idea of what it'll look like.

Everything is going great so far with our new location, which we're thrilled about. I can't wait to show you how it's shaping up. Construction started on Monday, mostly concrete work for the plumbing. Our equipment is getting ordered, in fact most of the major items are already taken care of. And I've been working with our partner vendors to figure out what delicious coffees, chocolates, and pastries we'll be offering when we open.

As I write this I'm polishing off a nice cup of chai tea I made using some samples and smelling the rich aroma of the bag of herbal tea I brought home with me. Later on my wife will grind up some of the coffee samples from our short list and we'll have a little tasting. In future posts I'll tell you a bit about the great local vendors we're partnering with. We want to bring the best of the Pikes Peak area together in one great location.

For now, though, the building is still an empty shell. Here's a quick video I made of the interior after the first day of work using my Flip video camera. It's not great cinema, but it'll do. I'll post updates as things go forward so you can see it all come together. That's all for now!