S1E2: "Ample Fandom; Bob Iger, Oprah, Steven Spielberg & more"

Welcome. We're Jackie and Brian, and this is As the Ice Cream Churns. Together, we found an ample hills creamery, one of the most beloved ice cream brands of the last decade. Then, we lost it all. We filed for bankruptcy a day before New York City shut down to the COVID-19. Now, someone else owns ample hills and we're out of work. But, we're ready to start over. Come join us for an exploration of what went wrong, and more importantly, what comes next. Our guides are close friend Debbie Rosen. She created the cracked cookies in her hit flavor, salted cracked caramel. When she's not baking, she's a therapist. We thought she could help us navigate these troubled waters. Let's get started. Okay, so last episode, you left us hanging with the Bob Eiger email. What happened after that? Well, I mean, you know, I actually sort of, I think it helps to maybe go back just a little bit before that, before we get to Bob. And I grew up in South Florida in a place called Boca Raton, which is, you know, mostly a community where you go to retire. But I did grow up there. And the family, you know, we went to Disney two, three times a year as a kid. So, I mean, I was all in on Disney. Jackie probably tell you that she wasn't quite such a dude. My family never had any interest in actually going to Disney. I love Disney. And, you know, not in any kind of conscious way, but I think in retrospect, all of that sort of focus that Disney had on storytelling and narrative. Nobody does it better than Disney. And I think that that was really baked into the way that we thought of ample hills as a different kind of ice cream shop, an ice cream shop that did more than just sell milk, cream, sugar, and eggs. You know, it told a story of how the ice cream was being made. It told stories with the individual flavors. And I think ultimately, you know, when we started shipping ice cream out of our Gwana shop, which was the summer of 2014, we opened that shop on July 15th, in 2014. And later that summer, we started shipping ice cream around the country to customers on dry ice. And we were hand packing the pints. And we could see who the orders were coming in from, you know, and an order came in from Bob Eiger at Disney. And we just, you couldn't believe that Bob Eiger was getting on his computer and ordering ice cream. And so we shipped him the ice cream and we shipped him a copy of our new cookbook that had just come out. And, you know, and he wrote that email that I'll just go through again real quickly. He said, Brian, I can't thank you enough for the book. And your ice cream is simply incredible. I've already sent a few six packs to friends. And I fully intend to introduce others to your magnificent creations. If I can do anything for you, please let me know who knows Triple Question Mark. Maybe we can get amplholes to Disney. Triple Question Mark. Best Bob. And so it was, you know, it came in at what time at night. It was like 930 in the evening on October 17th, 2014. And that really, there's like the before and after. And that moment really changed everything. I mean, we spent about a half hour absolutely convinced that, you know, it was somebody playing a prank on us. There's no way that Bob Eiger Disney is emailing me. And we read the email over about 7,000 times. And then finally wrote him back an email and you know, told them all about how I'd grown up in South Florida and went to Disney. And yes, he could help. And yes, we'd love to have amplholes at Disney. But really what happened, I guess, you know, in the coming weeks and months was that he really became a mentor to me and a friend. And we got on the phone quite a bit. And, you know, I think the biggest value, really, what he did it that those early months was to help us codify what it was that we were doing well. And, you know, everything we had done up to that point, we clearly had made intention to do the things we had done. But we hadn't written them down in such a way. You know, we didn't have a business plan. That's right. I mean, everything came naturally to us in a way that was just kind of embedded in our DNA and in the way in which we set up the shop and, you know, what the way we thought about the business, you're right. Yeah, we hadn't, yes, exactly. But we hadn't sort of put it down on paper in a way that would allow us to grow to open, we were starting to think about opening more shops. We were starting to think about expanding and how we could do that and to keep the heart and soul of what we'd done and sort of, you know, identify these are the things that are important to us, it's storytelling, community, and gathering spot. And these things we hadn't really given voice to as much as we had we had shown, but not told. And so one of the things that Bob was so good at was sort of helping coach us through the experience of putting those things down on paper and sort of creating a mission statement out of that and a vision for the company. And then, you know, as the months came on and to November and December, then what really happened that was so mind blowing was that he started to send ice cream to his friends. And so, you know, as a Christmas gift, that was the big thing. So his Christmas gift list came in and there were about 30 or 40 names on it. And there were a who's who, you know, people at Disney and the entertainment industry. And, you know, for me as a sci-fi movie writer, you know, the best name on that list was JJ Abrams, who had of course directed the new Star Trek movie, they had reinvented the Star Trek movie. And he'd been hired to direct the new Star Wars movie, which was Episode 7, which hadn't, which wasn't going to come out for another year from then. So this was December of 2014. Episode 7 didn't come out into theaters until December 2015. But he'd already been shooting the movie. And so Bob had sent him ice cream to JJ. And JJ had written this beautiful little thank you note to Bob and had drawn a picture of himself like as a giant job of the kind of character. And it said after Amphel Hills, you know, and it was, it was this picture of himself as a giant fat person. It was very cute. And so, and then somewhere around mid-December, we were at the shop in Gwannis. And we got a phone call from somebody who was working on a yacht in the Bahamas who was asking if we could get ice cream down to this yacht before Christmas. And we thought about it and we said, well, I don't, we didn't, you know, we couldn't ship the ice cream internationally and we couldn't ship it to a yacht. We certainly couldn't ship it internationally. And we were, said we were sorry and, and no and, and hung up the phone. And then we started to google the name of the yacht with, well, I mean, the yacht has to belong to somebody. It's a yacht in the Bahamas and they want ice cream. And the yacht was registered to Steven Spielberg. And that just, of course, blew our minds because how would Steven Spielberg have heard of Amphel Hills? Why does he want the ice cream on his yacht? And does he? Or is it somebody else on his yacht? And so about a half hour later, we got another call this time from Spielberg's assistant at one of the movie studios who was calling to basically plead with us to find a way to get him ice cream on this yacht. And we did. We figured it out. His, his son Spielberg's grown son was flying through New York. The week before Christmas. And so he would be able to come to the shop and pick up the ice cream and then get it down himself to his dad on the yacht for the family to have the vacation. But we asked this assistant. We said, well, wait, how does Spielberg have, uh, know anything about Amphel Hills? Why, why is he going through these links to get ice cream on to the yacht? And she said, well, it's because JJ Abrams shared the ice cream with Spielberg. And specifically, JJ Abrams had invited Spielberg into his office, the week before, before he'd gone down to his yacht to share with him footage from the new Star Wars movie that nobody else in the world had seen, but he was going to share it with Spielberg to get his opinion. And while the two of these guys, the best sci-fi movie people in the world are sitting there watching Star Wars, JJ shared with him the Amphel Hills ice cream. And Spielberg was like, my god, I've got to have this on my yacht. And so then about a week after that, it was the day after Christmas. And Bob, I your visited our shop for the very first time. He came to, he was in town for the holidays. holidays and he came to the go on a shop to meet us and we'd talked on the phone many times before then and corresponded to your email and he came into the shop and the first thing I did was I told him the story about Spielberg and JJ Abrams because of course the only reason Spielberg had the ice cream was because he Bob had sent the ice cream to JJ and he said oh I know he's on his yacht I was gonna have you send him ice cream just like to everybody else but I knew he was on his yacht so I was gonna do it after Christmas let me give him a call so Bob Iger picks out it takes out his cell phone and calls Steven Spielberg on his yacht and puts him on speakerphone and says Steven you know where I am right now you know I'm at ample hills and so for about you know two to three minutes we got to talk to Steven Spielberg about ample hills and about ice cream and his favorite flavor which was what was his favorite flavor well pistachio with the pistachio with Steven Spielberg I think it was known a D's oh no you're right at that time it was known a D's yeah and then later on when we had spoken with him yeah he was talking about how incredible pistachio but for me I mean that moment in time was I remember thinking like it doesn't get me better than this it can't get me better than this there's no way it can get better than this well I mean I just have to you know interject and just say that you know you were just so smitten with Spielberg forever and so you know I mean you wrote bad sci-fi movie yeah flubbered flubbered terror was it? Alien Express yeah okay with Lou's Iron Phillips yeah I can't fall because people might look it up yeah I don't yeah we don't want you to look those up please uh Spielberg definitely wouldn't have directed those but you know yeah I did just it couldn't get me better than that not for me anyway so it couldn't get any better did it? well I mean maybe not for Brian but for ample hills and in for from me I think it certainly did because then what Bob was doing was sending the ice cream all over the place to all of his friends to Barbara Streisand to Oprah Winfrey and I'll never forget also when Oprah Winfrey actually called the Vanderbilt shop and Max who used to be a student of mine and and many many people know Max because he identified as a vampire but Max picked up the phone and you know he's you know she said oh hi he's like she's like this is Oprah Winfrey can I speak with the owners of ample hills and he kind of laughed and he said no the owners are not here right now and and she said well this is Oprah and I wanted to just you know relay a message to them and and Max's mind he said at that moment he thought that he was gonna be gifted a new car but uh but then but then yeah so so so she said what just when I say I just got this incredible gift from my friend Bob Eiger and and the ice cream was phenomenal the Uigui was absolutely outrageously out of this world and I loved the salt to crack caramel and you know Max was like oh the Uigui is my favorite too and he was actually he loved the Uigui so so yeah just it kind of snowballed from from that time you know after that we were you know it's just snowballed yeah so this is all very intoxicating what would you say was your most important takeaway from your relationship with Bob well I mean you know and it goes on to this day he's you know helped us sort of think through some of the you know the fall that happened at Amphal Hills and process that but you know really you know besides the sort of heady dizzying experience of introducing it to these trendsetters and VIP people you know there's that just that sense of the the opening of doors you know and the validation that comes from somebody who runs what you know is considered by most people to be you know the the great media company on the planet and one that does a profoundly beautiful job of telling stories in all kinds of media whether you're standing in line at a ride at Amcad or the Magic Kingdom or if you're in a movie theater watching one of Disney's movies they're focused on storytelling is so profound and I think that for him to recognize that in what we were doing sort of the ultimate kind of validation it gave us the confidence to believe that this business this idea of what we were doing had legs and and and might be able to grow and move beyond Brooklyn in the area that we were in and so when he also then would share it with people like JJ Abrams or Spielberg or Oprah and then their response was the same as his response not oh that's nice Bob thanks for sharing it but you know I don't really like it no their response was you know let me send it out to other people I mean Spielberg for years has sent the ice cream to all kinds of actors that have all been in his movies you know when it's their birthdays and so they become fans and then push that story forward you know and I think it you know it led to so many things I mean the Food Network ended up doing a special and named us the top ice cream in the country you know and and that of course is not a direct relationship to Bob or Bob introducing the ice cream to Food Network but the exposure that working with Bob and Disney brought to the company put it in front of people like Food Network etc and then I mean then there was also the license deals I mean doing actual ice cream with Disney properties I mean I you know I won't forget like you know I was sitting on the couch and I was thinking I gotta be so cool to do Star Wars ice cream you know when episode seven comes out now that JJ's had the ice cream and Bob likes it and so I just texted Bob Eiger and you know pitched him the idea I said what do you think and you know and he loved it and we talked with JJ and came up with flavor ideas and I mean and you know got to fly out to Los Angeles for the premiere event and met JJ Abrams and so yeah all those things allowed the ice cream and the company to be seen by a much much much broader audience you know that then it otherwise would have been and a much much tighter and shorter time frame I mean we also then eventually got to opening talking to Bob about opening a shop I mean from that very first email when he had said you know maybe ample hills at Disney question mark yeah I mean so you know I don't remember when that was that that was in 2016 and we flew down there and we we helped open that shop beautiful beautiful space so what you're talking about is you know all the benefits of this relationship and what it brought to you was there a downside well I mean you know it's funny because I don't know that there had to have been a downside I think they're ultimately probably was a downside I think I think that's something that you know you could definitely draw a straight line to from those dizzying heights of of dealing with Disney and all those things to all the troubles that befell us years later and ultimately led to the bankruptcy I think that ultimately it comes from sort of chasing chasing that star and and and flying too close to the to the sun if you will but it's you know it led to a led to a lot of things a lot of wonderful opportunities like raising a lot of equity money private investors which you know we can get into next episode and then what that caught what that allowed us to do but then what the pressures that that then put on the business to continue to try to to grow which then led to the stumbles that followed great yeah so I don't know maybe that's enough for for one time and before it gets too dark then we'll get into the downside the line that was drawn yeah all right well thank you Debbie we'll talk to you next time Thanks, Deb.