We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kristina Zontini. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kristina below.

Hi Kristina , thanks for joining us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

Oh man, it all started when I stumbled upon a new cookbook at one of my favorite ice cream shops in Chicago called Pretty Cool Ice Cream. The Book is Hello My Name is Ice Cream by Dana Cree – it’s the holy grail of ice cream cookbooks among ice cream enthusiasts, but at the time I just thought it had a fun cover and I like to collect cookbooks.

I had just moved to Northern NH after a six month bike pack around the Southwest with my partner. It was time to find a “real” job again and I fell into a marketing position at our absolutely beloved food coop in town. I loved my coworkers and it was rewarding working for an organization that was quite literally founded, financed & built by our tiny mountain community. I lasted a few years but the daily grind at my computer had been longing for a more creative job.

I didn’t have a plan but decided to quit my job and pick-up odd jobs as I figured it out. I worked at a local restaurant I admired as a line cook and took up baking bread for friends, family & eventually baked loaves for the restaurant I worked at. During that time, my husband asked why I have an ice cream book sitting in the kitchen counter? I didn’t have a good answer, since I didn’t even own an ice cream machine. I was like well, “I would need an ice cream maker”…and he responded… “umm, you could buy one?”. Seemed obvious, I guess, so off i went researching machines. Realizing early on that the run of the mill “freeze the canister 24 hours before” machine would be silly, would be my lucky break. I went right ahead and purchased a machine that could freeze ice cream without requiring freezing the canister in advance and I could make batch after batch. (They are an extra $200 but I ended up running a business off of just two of these table top compressor models for an entire year)

So I started making ice cream, following recipes in Dana Cree’s book. I think I started on a Friday and kept making recipe after recipe and just didn’t stop. To this day, I can’t really remember why or how I didn’t get distracted and do any number of things. But I ended up with a freezer full of ice cream. So I decided to package it and give it to friends so I could make more room for flavor experiments. Just about anything can be blended, infused, or chopped into ice cream. Fast forward a few weeks and my friend Nick (who owns an incredible shop on Main Street, Bethlehem with his Wife Sarah & daughter Cleo.) said, “Hey I have a chest freezer you can have for free, why don’t you use that and have people pick-up ice cream at your house”. At this moment in time, I had already started a private instagram account to track flavors I was creating and I had a small e-mail list of friends I would blast with a list of ice cream flavors for sale. Everything I was doing was pretty illegal so I jokingly called it the “Super Secret Ice Cream Club” for lack of a better e-mail subject line. I was kind of complaining to Nick that I didn’t want to manage deliveries or ice cream pick-ups anymore – too many people were hearing about this “secret club” and my orders started growing. Nick without hesitation already had an idea, he offered up his old chest freezer he wanted to get rid of in his basement. At that moment, it kind of all clicked.

I picked up my newly gifted chest freezer and made plans to renovate a little ski tuning shed that happened to come with our house. It was set back into the woods, a cozy little spot. I spiffed it up a bit with paint and added a little logo on the front door, then set up a pretty sketchy extension cord from my house and plugged in the chest freezer.

I was executing on these little fun “hobby” ideas but at this point I still never thought I wanted to start a business. I don’t think I ever really knew I wanted to start a business…and still don’t know but here I am! I just keep taking bigger and bigger steps to make it more real. After I set-up my little ice cream shack in the woods, more people started hearing about it and it went from a private Instagram page to a public (yet still illegal)) operation. Then spring was coming to an end and it was almost Summer time and I decided since I was still making ice cream and people were still eating it – I should become legal and sell at our local farmers market. Ice Cream is not an easy business to get into, the start-up costs are high but I got lucky and found a tiny ice cream maker on craigslist that also came with a little ice cream push cart. Then I got even luckier when I found an unused commercial kitchen space in a nearby town. I contacted the owner of the kitchen and a good friend who was looking for a bigger kitchen for her bakery business. We signed a joint lease, shared the cost of rent and spent hours and hours together in our new kitchen churning and baking up a storm for our local farmers market every Sunday. I was sleep deprived working on a tiny machine, barely keeping up with demand and I definitely didn’t know how to pace myself – creating 3-5 new flavors every week.

The community support was overwhelming and that kept me going, although I still didn’t really know what this hobby/idea/tiny business was or what my end goal was. I was still having fun and I kept doing it, so I continued on for two market Summer…until my kitchen lease ran out. I couldn’t renew my lease, summer was coming to a close and I needed to either find a new kitchen or stop making ice cream. I agonized over a few weeks about what to do, should I keep going? Do I like this? How will I know if being a small business owner is fun? Will I hate it? To this day I don’t understand how people know if they like something until they’re doing it. But how do you dip your toes into owning a fully operational business where all the burden lies on you?! It turns out that you won’t really know but luckily for me, I have supportive friends and family and a husband who told me he’d do it with me. With him on my team, it felt a little less risky and he promised if I hated it, we could find a way out. But can you!? Who knows. Anyways, a really incredible spot came on the market right on main street in our little town. Parking, plenty of square footage and a good price tag. The timing worked out and I couldn’t pass up a building that happened to be down the street from my favorite independent Movie Theatre, which happens to employ my best friend as the Executive DIrector. It all felt a little too perfect and we were a town without an ice cream shop, no town should be without an ice cream shop!

So we did it! We bought the building, we frantically hired contractors, I became a construction manager for about a year and we turned the building into a kitchen with a little take out window. Our take-out window opened July 1st, 2022 and we were able to start generating revenue not too long after our building purchase. We slowly built out our inside seating area and fully opened it to the public in December 2022, right before the serious snow started to fall.

My little idea to start making ice cream, gained a force of it’s own and propelled me into a pretty crazy adventure from ice cream shack, to cart and now an ice cream shop. I still don’t really understand how I executed this and now there’s a shop I walk into everyday but it wouldn’t have grown into this without my community, friends & family fiercely supporting me every step of the way.

Kristina , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I became an ice cream maker by chance, I had an ice cream cookbook and I was just curious. Honestly, I was feeling depressed after quitting my desk job, not knowing what to do next and I thought it would be a fun project to learn to make ice cream. However my friends would say that I’ve been obsessed with ice cream and they are definitely not surprised to see me here today. My first job was at my local ice cream shop when I was in high school, I loved it but then went off to college, graduated and bopped around to different jobs. I managed farmers markets, was a professional dog walker, landed a dream gig at a my local NPR affiliate doing development work, did marketing for our local food coop and even a stint as a line cook.

Ice cream is everywhere and it’s often flooded with flavored syrups, food coloring and churned in a way that incorporates 50% or more air into the final product (also known as overrun), By pumping air into ice cream, you can double your yield and increase profits substantially. I couldn’t figure out why nobody was crafting ice cream like a pastry chef would make an incredible croissant or other beloved pastry – finding the best butter, the highest quality cream and ripe local berries. (spoiler alert, it’s because it’s extremely labor intensive and some people enjoy a work-life balance)

I started Super Secret Ice Cream with a mission to craft ice cream that was truly made from scratch. Our ice cream bases are made in-house with milk & cream from our local dairy. Then we source as much as we can locally (blueberries, strawberries, mint, basil, honey, etc) and other ingredients like chocolate and vanilla beans are carefully chosen from places that we think are creating an incredible product, treating their employees well and mindful of their environmental impact.

My goal is to just make really good ice cream, which starts with using real ingredients. Then I wanted to create an experience for my community. There is nothing better than getting outside on an adventure with friends and topping it off enjoying a warm waffle cone filled with ice cream.

It’s been a wild ride and I still don’t really think it’s hit me yet that I’m in charge of running a real ice cream shop with a full team of employees. I’m thankful for everyone coming and ordering ice cream, suggesting new flavor ideas and being so kind to us as we navigate running a brand new shop.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I built a loyal following for my ice cream business by really not thinking too hard about it! I was never much of a social media user and it kind of intimidated me. However, I started off posting photos of the ice cream I made because it was fun, I didn’t overthink it and just enjoyed trying to get a nice shot of what I made that day for flavors. I’ve always been terrified of a job where I would have to professionally write because it was never a skill I excelled at. So, I kept my posts casual, fun and just wrote what came to my mind.

I was kind of anti-marketing when I first started. I was recently in a marketing job and I always felt kind of weird telling people to buy stuff. It didn’t come naturally. So my Instagram was set to private and I only let a few people I knew follow my account. As I started selling ice cream to friends, the word got out that there was an instagram account called “super secret ice cream” making ice cream and selling it in a little shack in the woods. Looking back now, it was kind of brilliant – it created such a buzz and people were trying to figure out how to get on my ice cream drop list. A weekly e-mail that I’d send out announcing I had unique flavors of ice cream that you could purchase by coming to little ice cream shack behind my house in the woods.

I’m no expert but clear photos that make people curious, excited or crave what you’re doing are important. I also think it’s it’s vital to remember that it’s a full-time job running social media accounts. Be easy on yourself and try not to compare yourself to other accounts who mostly likely have 3-5 social media gurus on staff getting the perfect shot and spending hours laying out content weeks ahead of time. I used my husbands iphone camera for the first two years because mine is awful, I upgraded but still just have a regular Iphone camera and I’m constantly running around trying to juggle snapping photos while churning ice cream and everything else that comes with running a small business.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.supersecreticecream.com
• Instagram: supersecreticecream