We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Duncan Parsons a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Duncan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So, one thing many business owners consider is donating a percentage of sales or profits to an organization or cause. We’d love to hear your thoughts and the story behind how and why you chose the cause or organization you donate to.
We’re fortunate that bringing our ice cream trucks to fundraisers, charity events and galas adds to the atmosphere in a meaningful and tangible way. It makes it a more special experience for event guests and is a genuine way we can donate our time and services to support important causes. Often we’ll cater a fundraiser for free, and we also do a lot of events, particularly at schools, where we’ll donate a percentage of our sales, generally around 15%, to the school or PTA. It’s also fun for our team — our event coordinators get a lot of joy from working with the people who are generously donating their own time to organize fundraisers and support their communities, and our ice cream truck drivers and event staff get to meet kind people and give away ice cream! Win win!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am from Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand, which is a fruit growing region. My dad grew apples and my sisters and I grew up on our family orcahrd. At the end of our road was a strawberry farm. They’d freeze their strawberries and blend them on the spot with ice cream, making a creamy, fresh soft serve ice cream, using a special machine designed in New Zealand about 30 years ago. We grew up eating this style of ice cream all the time, as do tons of kiwi kids.
After high school I won a scholarship to study at Duke University, and after graduating I moved to California without too much of a plan, but pretty quickly realized how similar in atmosphere, fruit growing and weather it was to Hawke’s Bay. I thought maybe I could be an ice cream man for a summer and sell the style of ice cream I grew up with.
That was in 2020, and I found a old state-fair styled trailer in Arkansas, so I flew out there and towed it to Los Angeles. It had sold funnel cakes at the Arkansas State Fair for decades and I fixed it up, refurbished the inside and repainted/branded it and began making ice cream!
Since then I have added another trailer and four catering carts, plus shops in Hermosa Beach and El Segundo.
For us, Creamy Boys is about having fun with your mates and enjoying the simple things, like good ice cream! The name obviously is a bit of a joke, and while of course we do our best and as any small business owner knows, a lot of work goes on to keep the wheels on, we don’t take ourselves too seriously. I’m really lucky to have great friends and customers who are fun to be around and make the brand what it is!
How did you build your audience on social media?
Anyone running a business knows that social media is the last thing you get around to and the easiest to kick down the road when there is more pressing things to do. Instagram is the only place I’ve shared updates/engaged with our customers, and my approach is quality over quantity. There are always fads about “strategies for posting” and whatever, but I’ve never had the time or real interest to keep up with that. My metric is basically “is this interesting/cool; if I was reading this as a customer, would I really care about this?” and so I post less frequently but try to keep it interesting and have fun updates. I’m sure this doesn’t optimize for reach/impressions but it’s the only way I know how and it suits my style.
As a brand I’m really interested in doing more than ice cream — creamy boys has sports gear and loves celebrating athletes, especially amateurs who are getting after it. We do lots of community things, we have a fun team who have their own stories, we award “creamer of the week” to people in our community.. it’s a whole mix of things and I like to share all of that.
We just hit 10,000 followers on instagram which is a cool milestone. That number isn’t something I really care about, but it’s nice to think there’s 10,000 people who have seen genuine stories I’ve been able to share and want to follow along and be a part of the creamy boys story. In general it’s wicked to have a platform where people can send us messages, get involved and have some fun back and forth between a brand and the people who support it.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
Creamy Boys is entirely self-funded/bootstrapped. There are some pros and cons to this of course. The benefit is that you’re really intentional and careful about how you do things and it forces you to ask for a lot of help and do a lot of DIY. I didn’t know anyone in Los Angeles when I arrived in 2020 and I was just floored at how many people were willing to help me with their time, skills, teaching, tools, etc. often for free or for a box of beers. Everybody understands how much work it takes to succeed, they’ve been in your shoes before, and they want to see you win — it’s a really special feature of the USA, too, people here are so jazzed at your concept and they can’t wait to cheer you, get stuck in, celebrate your success, whatever, it’s great! And the best part is when you actually do succeed, you can show them, and they’re a legit part of your journey and they can rightfully take pride in the success, which in turn makes it much more meaningful to me. That’s for sure one of the best parts about Creamy Boys, and something that I had no idea about when I started out.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.creamyboys.com
- Instagram: @creamyboysicecream
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/creamyboysicecream
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/duncanbparsons/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/creamy-boys-hermosa-beach-8
