We recently connected with Marc Johnson and have shared our conversation below.
Marc , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?
To me, the key to success is refusing to fail. Some may say that failure helps you correct yourself to create, pivot or adjust for improvement. This is true, however, it all depends on how you view failure. I view success as the end game, therefore failures at different points along the path are nothing more than adjusters to lead me to the ultimate goal of success. Whereas not achieving my end goal would truly be failure and that’s not an option for me.
Many people have told me that an average business takes 5 years to succeed and if your business isn’t making a reasonable profit in 5 years that maybe it’s time to give it up. This idea is foreign to me because time is relative and average time is irrelevant. I say time is relative because we all experience time, however how we experience it may differ. I say that average time is irrelevant because the law of average has no bearing on your destiny. What if your business is destined to succeed in 6 years yet you quit at year 5, the average. Success is now unobtainable because you gave up.
In Year 6 of our existence, we had a formidable time competing with two other companies in our industry. Our products were superior; however, we didn’t have the following, marketing, money or resources to keep up with the competition. We even tried to graduate from being a mobile ice cream company to obtaining a brick and mortar so we could have a central location which new customers could find us. Due to our lack of assets, money, and sales, we could never get the financing to get the storefront and compete. A couple years later a pandemic rears it’s ugly head, people are advised not to gather in public, brick and mortar businesses suffer profusely, and mobile business that can offer contactless deliveries thrive. In addition, the government offered many new financial opportunities that small businesses like mine could take advantage of, to not only survive but to grow the business. Imagine if we stop in year 5 instead of persevering through year 8. Failure would be ours and success would be denied.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I moved to the DFW area after getting married, promptly lost my job, that’s when I decided I would create my own. My Father-in-Law convinced me that Ice Cream was the magic product. So, I convinced my family to start the business. We bought 2 ice cream trucks, some chest freezers and a bunch of ice cream inventory. My initial desire was to offer a plethora of ice cream novelty options. When I was a kid, I loved looking at all the options the ice cream man provided. It would take forever for me to order as I fantasized over trying every frozen creamy delight, almost like a kid winning a golden ticket to the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory. This was to the dismay of the ice cream man, who grew impatient possibly thinking “Time is money, this kid is making me late to the next sale.”
Too soon we learned that offering over 100 ice cream novelty options was not necessarily a good idea. We used to plug in the freezers on the ice cream truck every night. Then one night I forgot. We lost all 100+ boxes of products on the truck. In addition, a box usually held 24 packages of each type of ice cream. Needless to say, I learned a hard lesson. It’s expensive to replace all that inventory if something goes wrong. Today we only offer 6 standard flavors. We may rotate a few other flavors from time to time.
Not long after starting the business, we realized that the information we gathered through research was obsolete. We had other ice cream truck owners telling us how they made between $100 -$250 K per year in a seasonal business. Yet these same people were selling off their ice cream trucks and apparently getting out of the business. It soon became clear that the ice cream truck business was drying up. People could buy the same products at a gas station or at Walmart for a fraction of the cost of what we could sell them. In addition, our strategy of using social media to connect with kids who may be indoors playing video games didn’t work. They were not coming out of their air-conditioned homes to 90-degree weather when they could walk to their kitchen and pull out of the freezer, the same product their parents bought at Walmart.
We know our only path to survival was to start our own product line, control the quality and cut out the middleman. Our products would be unique to us and the only way you could get it is through Neighborhood Ice Cream Truck. To pull this off we knew our products had to be one of the best tasting Cream Pops/Fruit Pops/Ice Cream around. Therefore, we focused on using our grandmother’s ice cream recipe. We recalled issues that some of our past customers had with some of the ingredients for the products we bought from the wholesaler. So, we decided that we would not use any artificial flavors, artificial colors, additives or preservatives in our ice cream. We wanted it to taste as close to our Grandmother’s Homemade Ice Cream as possible. We even created our own Vanilla Extract so we could control the intensity of Vanilla in our ice cream base.
Once we started producing our own products, our competitiveness started kicking in. Our goal was to not only produce the best tasting cream pops and fruit pops ever but to refuse to release any flavor unless the taste pops instantly in your mouth. We call these “Bangers.” Our focus on flavor was so intense that we noticed that our Fruit Pops tasted like riper versions of the fruit we created it with. Our observation also taught us that a combination of certain fruits will enhance the ripeness of the dominant fruit in the mixture. The response was notable. Customers frequently commented on how they could taste fresh ripe strawberries, or the mango pop taste like we just froze fresh ripe mango, or even people telling us they can see the vanilla seeds in our vanilla bar. These experiences make a lasting impression on the freshness and quality of our products.
Once we had our menu/recipes down and consistent, our next goal was to focus on our service. We decided to sell our ice cream trucks and focus more on selling at Farmers Markets. Our beat-up ice cream trucks kept breaking down and didn’t match the quality of our premium ice cream novelties. We could sell at Farmers Markets and Pop-Up events to attract clientele who may appreciate a higher quality ice cream experience. We were also able to sell our products at the State Fair of Texas, as food vendors. The transition to making our own products also created catering opportunities for a lot of Corporations in the DFW area (i.e., 4123 Cedar Springs Apartments, Adams Golf, AECOM, Alliance Geotechnical Group, Amity Bible Church, Apartment Life, Bright Horizons, Capital One, CCMC, Christ the King Catholic Church, Dallas Stars, Garage Men’s Grooming, JCPenney, Medical City Hospital, Mondrian CityPlace Apartments, Omni Hotels, One Community Church, Primrose Schools, Prince of Peace Catholic Schools, Texas Star Golf Club, Twin Oaks School, Village Church of Denton, etc.).
During the pandemic, we were unable to sell at Farmers Markets, so we updated our website, and created a contactless delivery service. For our deliveries we provide custom menus based on the products purchased. We also package the ice cream to stay frozen for up to 12 hours without refrigeration. We can deliver to a park in 100-degree weather and the ice cream will stay frozen for hours. We go above and beyond to accommodate our customers and provide the best customer service. We know that bad service will accelerate a bad reputation quicker than almost anything else. We promoted our Contactless Ice Cream Delivery service with Apartments and encouraged them to offer a Contactless Ice Cream Social. This helped us survive the Covid-19.
We created Lollisicles, petite ice pops which works well for health-conscious people concerned with portion control. To imagine what a Lollisicle is, just think if a Popsicle had a baby with a Lollipop, that would be it. We noticed that Lollisicles became popular with children, the elderly, as well as dieters. Then we decided to promote Lollisicle Deliveries with Daycare Centers, and even Senior Living Centers too. Daycare and Early Education Centers were also essential to our survival during Covid-19.
One thing I’ve noticed since we’ve been in business is that Ice Cream is the great Equalizer. No matter what problem people may have with each other, ice cream will change the energy of a room. I’ve witnessed the power of ice cream. Once I delivered to a local IT company witnessed colleagues at each other’s throat; tension so thick you could cut it with a knife. But once they had an ice cream bar in their hands, the tension dissipated, smiles began to form and there was peace and cooperation. Ice cream has a way, unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed before, to take people to their happy place. That’s why our motto is “Fun! Right Here!! Right Now!!!” It brings out the inner-child and puts everybody on equal footing. If you need a morale event, if you want a team building exercise, then hire us and watch your team become more cordial and cooperative. It also helps that we make “The Best Ice Cream in Texas!” our other motto. We were slow to own this claim, but so many of our customers made that proclamation that we decided to own it.
To anyone who’s never tried Neighborhood Ice Cream Truck, I hope you give us a try. The thing that sets us apart and the thing that I’m most proud of is our creativity. There’s a lot of ice cream places with creative flavors, however we are creative in everything we do. We may come up with a bunch of new flavors, but you will never know unless they are bangers. We are the first company that I could find that created an ice cream gift box, which contains ice cream, and delivers it. You could find “Ice Cream Gift Boxes” at Costco, yet they have no ice cream in them, only ice cream accessories like sprinkles, cookies, chocolate sauces, caramel sauces. This is the kind of creativity I speak of. So, if you’re looking for a creative ice cream experience with top quality service, flavors and ingredients, then give Neighborhood Ice Cream Truck (nictruck.com) a try.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Creativity, Imagination and Courage.
One thing about being an entrepreneur is there’s going to be a time where you have to pivot. Pivoting takes creativity, imagination and courage. There were several times where I had to pivot and change courses on a dime in order to succeed. Starting Neighborhood Ice Cream Truck required I pivot from searching for an IT job after 67 rejection letters and pursuing self-employment. After starting my business, I realized that I wasn’t going to make the money right away to pay my bills, so I had to take a permanent part-time job driving school buses in order to have enough money to pay bills and enough time to devote to my business. I used creativity to find which part-time job would have flexibility in scheduling yet offer me ways to increase my work when I needed more money.
I had to be imaginative in how I scheduled my time because the school students I ended up driving were the customers I would serve after school. My imagination allowed me to resolve this time conflict issue. I couldn’t be there to sell ice cream while I was on the bus. My solution was to find neighborhoods where kids would come outside at a later time instead of when they were walking home from the bus stop.
In order to make this pivot work, I had to find the courage, to acknowledge that my financial projections were incorrect, and not let my pride get in the way of making a sound decision in finding a job to supplement my income.
Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?
We make our own All Natural Handcrafted Cream Pops, Fruit Pops, and Ice Cream. We had to pivot once we had wholesaler issues our second year in the State Fair of Texas. As soon as we realized getting the products we needed would be a problem, we committed to making our own. We only offered 2 flavors for the fair, Lemonade and Arnold Palmer. We wanted to condense our menu to allow ourselves to be more efficient. First, we had to buy the equipment and learn how to use it by watching YouTube videos. The previous year, in anticipation of making our own products, we started creating our own recipes. We also joined different Facebook groups with others making their own products, which gave us a platform to reach out for more information. The main lessons we learned from this experience were to pay attention to quality assurance, constantly review your processes for inefficiencies, and understand that there are valuable lessons in mistakes. These lessons learned are actually the holistic experience that really helped us to hone our craft.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.nictruck.com
- Instagram: @nictruck
- Facebook: @nictruck
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/nictruck
- Twitter: @nict_12
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/neighborhood-ice-cream-truck-dallas-5
Image Credits
Marc Johnson