Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Robyn Thompson. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Robyn, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses.

I started Four Fat Cows back in 2015. At that time, my oldest two children worked in the store part time as scoopers and managers. That evolved into my oldest, Brenden, coming on board as my partner and CFO, just before he graduated college and then my second oldest, Jacob, joining us a few years later as our COO. We also get tons of input from my younger two, Ewan and Madigan, in regards to flavors, marketing ideas, retail products, etc. With our planned growth we are anything but a small family business, however we get to enjoy the benefits of a, functional family business. We all care so much about our customers and employees, go above and beyond to more than pull our weight, and we never have trust issues. For us, it is the best of all worlds and we get to work with the people we like the most!

Robyn, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Four Fat Cows was started because we wanted a place where families could go to get exceptional, creative ice cream and baked goods. We had lots of background in restaurants, but ice cream felt special, more happiness centered! When Four Fat Cows was started, three of us had been newly diagnosed with celiac’s disease. For us, it wasn’t just about bringing the highest quality ice cream to our guests, it was about delivering exceptional baked goods that are gluten free and taste so good that no one can tell the difference and dairy free options as well! We are proud of the quality of our items, we don’t use cheap fillers or ingredients, and we strive to bring not only classic flavors, but things that are fun and creative to our customers.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

We started Four Fat Cows with the intent of it being an ice cream store with a small bakery offering. As our stores began growing, so did our need for larger production space to handle that growth. Now we are not only manufacturing for our own stores, but in the past year there have been a large amount of businesses asking us to wholesale items to them. Not only ice cream but also cakes and desserts for many local restaurants. Subsequently, we have started the process of raising investment to grow our manufacturing facility to be able to handle all of the wholesale accounts and service our stores. It’s a very different thought process when you get into larger scale wholesale manufacturing. We’ve had to do everything from design ice cream and desserts that go way above and beyond the cupcakes, cookies, brownies and cakes we offer in our stores, to building fundraising decks, learning about larger scale equipment, and more. Changing gears from manufacturing our own products, into wholesale products has been such a fun learning experience!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I think anyone who owns a business can say that they have a story to illustrate their resilience after surviving Covid. I know many industries flourished during Covid, but for those of us in the restaurant industry, it was a bone crunching survival. There were moments we really thought we were going to have to close our doors, and felt relief that I’m not sure I can put into words when we got help that moved us one step away from closure. For me, I know there is no way our company would have survived if it wasn’t for the support around me. My oldest son is my business partner and he tirelessly filled out forms, grant applications and anything he could get his hands on to help us weather that part of the nightmare. My second oldest rolled up his sleeves and helped me with everything concerned with the day to day running of the stores and my youngest two were there cheering all of us on and sharing ideas! We also had a great team that hung on, supported, worked long hours, kept their spirits up and supported us Without them, I have no doubt I would have crumbled, as it was too much for anyone to shoulder on their own.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.fourfatcows.com
• Instagram: @fourfatcows.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fourfatcows

Image Credits
Images were taken by Hayley Langholtz