The Story of Crank & Boom Ice Cream: Part II
and the story continues!
Hi, Friends!
As promised, I’m continuing the story from last week’s post, The Story of Crank & Boom Ice Cream: Part I, on how Crank & Boom Ice Cream came to be.
In that post, I reflected on my personal journey of my family immigrating to Kentucky from Thailand and growing up helping my parents in our family restaurant, the Smile of Siam.
In this post, I share more about the beginnings of what became Crank & Boom and how we were able to create a thriving business centered around community.
If you’d rather listen to the second half of the story on the Crank & Boom Podcast, you can do so below!
When we made the decision to pivot from our restaurant, Thai Orchid Cafe, into an ice cream business, it really came down to listening to our customers who began to request our ice cream over and over. Looking back, listening to our customer has been a key to our continued success and has guided every big decision we have ever made for the company.
The journey to switch our focus to ice cream was more of a gradual process. My husband, Mike, and I began to think of how to incorporate customer demand for ice cream into our business. Summer was typically slower at the restaurant, so that seemed like the perfect season to make more of our ice cream and sell it at our local farmer’s market.
We quickly realized that if we were planning on selling ice cream on a larger scale than what we had been doing, then we needed bigger equipment than our 2-quart Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker. However, the basic commercial grade ice cream makers are not cheap and cost around $10,000. Mike ran the numbers and said if we could sell 1.5 pints for the next 5 years, we will be able to make it. I knew that I could go door to door or peddle 1.5 pints on the street. We decided to go for it
The next detail was deciding on a name for our ice cream business. “Thai Orchid Cafe Ice Cream” was likely to confuse customers, so we made the decision to name our ice cream business, “Crank & Boom.” The name was inspired by the old-fashioned way of making ice cream using a crank, and the boom represented the jolt of flavors you’re confronted with when tasting our ice cream—much like what you experience when eating Thai food.
Along with our commercial grade ice cream maker, we also decided to get a purple tent and a cart branded with our new Crank & Boom name for when we showed up as a vendor to different events. Our first event was 10 years ago in 2013 and a special memory for us. In the beginning, we were just so happy to be selling ice cream.
We knew that to get the brand in front of as many people as possible, we needed to be EVERYWHERE. We booked ourselves as a vendor at anything and everything. We said yes to birthday parties, festivals, and were a vendor anywhere people invited us. People began to notice that we frequented events and festivals and began to look for the Crank and Boom tent as our customer base began to grow. We probably went to 100 events that first summer.
Meanwhile, we were also running Thai Orchid Cafe full time for at least our first three summers. At that time, my weekend schedule was definitely busy. I’d go to work on Friday at 10am, work all day and close the restaurant at around 10pm or later. Then we’d go home, shower, sleep, and then wake up at 3am to set up for the farmer’s market. This lasted for three summers. Although we wore ourselves out, we were able to build our brand and gain loyal customers.
Building a business is never easy and there were times when we questioned what we were doing. However, we could see our hard work paying off over time. Even after all of these years, there are still times when I question why I’m working so hard. That’s why it’s so important to know and keep in mind the “why” behind your business.
Over time, the voices of our customers began to get louder. They began asking us where our store was, but that wasn’t a simple answer. We still had our Thai restaurant at this point, and our ice cream was available at a couple of grocery stores, but people really just wanted to buy our ice cream from our store. The question then became, “Will you please open a store?”
At first, we didn’t plan on adding another brick and mortar business to our plate until an opportunity presented itself from a friend who was a real estate broker. He left his card and mentioned that he had several places that he believed would be a great location to open up a shop.
One of the locations ended up being a location that Mike deemed “his building,” which is now our Manchester location in the Distillery District. Mike shared that when he first moved to Lexington, he always loved that building and hoped someone would develop it into something. We decided to tour it.
Looking at the upstairs, I immediately had a vision for this room being an event space for birthday parties or other special events along with an ice cream shop there as well that could serve alcohol—an ice cream lounge. With a lot of work, we finally had our first physical shop location despite the risk and the costs that came with moving our mobile business to a brick and mortar in June 2015.
The start of Crank & Boom felt like the next natural stage in my life, a journey that started with growing up and working in my parents’ restaurant to the business that Mike and I had built. My vision was that this store would become a center for the community to bring people together.
By sharing my story and the story of Crank and Boom, I hope to inspire those of you who dream of building a life of joy and purpose that might look different from others who aren’t entrepreneurs. You can live the life that you want to live and you can build a business that is authentically you.
Are you dreaming of starting your own business? What would be helpful to learn more about? Share it with us below in the comments!
Stay tuned for more behind-the-scenes stories of Crank & Boom, business inspiration, and tips for building a business as I share my experiences and guests’ expertise.
peace! ✌🏽
tg