How we started an Italian Ice Business - Part One

My wife and I are highschool sweethearts, although we didn’t know it at the time. I always felt at ease around her. We were instant friends and I trusted her completely. We were both photographers for the highschool yearbook, right before digital photography was mainstream. Both raised in Idaho Falls, Idaho I doubt very much either of us had heard of Italian ice or had ever had the opportunity to even try it.

It was much later, after we had found each other again and had started raising a family together that Rita’s Italian ice opened a franchise location in Idaho Falls. Misty fell in love with it. I enjoyed it too but didn’t think much about it until it shut down. My wife was sad and you know what they say about… happy wife, happy life. She craved the dairy free refreshment but it seemed like there was nothing to be done. She experimented with trying to make it at home with a consumer grade ice cream maker, but it just wasn’t the same.

A couple of years later, Misty’s cousin Scott opened his own Italian Ice business in Virginia.

Through talking with him and doing more research, we learned all about commercial batch freezers and the ingredients used to make great Italian ice. It was a spark of an idea, a hope that Misty might one day be reunited with her beloved Italian ice.

I don’t remember the exact conversation, but I have to think it went something like this:

Misty: “We should get an Italian ice machine so we can have Italian ice whenever we want.”

Mark: “That sounds expensive, how much do they cost?”

Misty: “Everyone recommends the Emery Thompson CB-350”

Mark: “How much does it cost?”

Misty: “About $13,000.”

Mark: “…………….are you crazy?”

I thought she might be crazy.

One thing I love about Misty though is that she loves extremes. She gets a giant kick out of miniature frying pans that are only large enough to cook one egg at a time. She will laugh-out-loud and giggle over a two-year-old wearing adult shoes like a clown.

I pretend to be annoyed by her obsession with size disparity, but secretly I love it. She loves to collect single-use kitchen equipment. Things that are ridiculously specific like an electric smore maker, or waffle makers that make waffles in the shape of a giraffe. So after she planted the seed of an idea of us owning a piece of industrial grade frozen desert equipment, the wheels started turning.

Around the same time a global pandemic had changed life pretty drastically. It was a dark time and I think we were pretty desperate for something light-hearted. We had continued discussions about a commercial batch freezer but nothing serious. It was a lot of money and I wasn’t really sure what we’d do with it.

Sell some Italian ice to the neighbors to try and make some of the money back?

We even did some napkin-math to try and figure out how many batches of Italian ice you’d have to sell to pay off the machine. It just didn’t seem realistic.

Near the time when stores started opening up again, the government decided to give out cash to families with children. We have 5 kids and were extremely blessed to come through Covid-19 with a good job, and the means to keep everything going as normally as we could, even with home-school and social distancing. We didn’t really need the cash and decided we wanted to do something with it that would help do what the government intended for it - stimulate the economy.

Looking at the total amount we received, plus a small amount of savings, it ended up being almost exactly enough to purchase a commercial batch freezer. We could use the investment  to make Misty’s favorite treat and share it with our community. We’d use it as an opportunity to teach our kids (and ourselves) about business, hard work, and making a desirable product. It was going to be a lemonaid stand - Misty style.

At this point, I still didn’t understand the impact Italian ice would have on our lives. The machine arrived having been shipped on a pallet all the way from Florida. We got it set up and Misty started formulating recipes and running test batches. As summer began we started planning for the opening night… the premiere of Summer Nights Italian Ice… in our front yard.

The response was not what I expected. But I’ll have to tell you about that in the next post.

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