Ample Hills Scooped Up by Original Owners

After a three-year financial rollercoaster, Ample Hills is right back where it started as: a family-run, small business.

The ice cream company, which was sold in 2020 as part of a bankruptcy process, was acquired by its original owners, husband and wife Brian Smith and Jackie Cuscuna, earlier this month and will reopen its flagship New York scoop shop today.

Ample Hills’ most recent owner, Schmitt Industries, had reportedly already sold off much of the company’s physical assets, according to Fast Company, so the couple paid $150,000 for some store leases and intellectual property including branding, packaging, social media accounts and recipes. The organic dairy farmer group NY-NE Dairy Consortium purchased the company’s manufacturing equipment for $50,000.

After their initial experience, Smith and Cuscuna say they plan to keep a more steady pace of growth this time around. By 2019, nine years after its founding, Ample Hills had raised over $20 million to build out a network of 16 stores across New York, New Jersey, Florida and California; opened an outpost at Disney World, a request by CEO Bob Iger himself; built a 15,000 square foot factory; and started a burgeoning CPG line.

Yet in 2020, facing millions of dollars in overages for the factory buildout, increased competition and an inability to scale the wholesale business, Ample Hills was forced to declare bankruptcy.

The ice cream brand was picked up by Schmitt for $1 million, an unusual move for a company that designed and manufactured “test, measurement and process control systems.” Though Schmidtt CEO Michael Zapata said Ample Hills would serve to diversify the company’s income, it soon became the main driver of revenue. According Schmitt’s annual report for the year ending May 2022, though not profitable, Ample Hills had $8.31 million in net revenue, up roughly 105% year-over-year, compared to its measurement division, which netted $1.57 million in revenue.

In December, just one month after announcing a partnership with the Brooklyn Nets, Schmitt “temporarily” closed all Ample Hills stores and furloughed employees. Though Zapata had told investors he planned to spin off the ice cream brand as a standalone entity in order to raise more capital, that plan appears to have not come to fruition, and, in a deja vu moment, Schmidtt was also forced to sell Ample Hills.

Cuscuna and Smith stepped in after spending the last two years operating The Social, a single scoop shop and bakery in Prospect Heights.

Moving forward, the couple plans to reopen at least three locations around New York City and reestablish online sales. To help these plans along, the couple has raised “nearly seven figures,” the Times reported, from entrepreneur Norm Brodsky.

While Ample Hill’s journey has been unique, founders purchasing back their company is less so. Crumbs founders Mia and Jason Bauer purchased their cupcake and cookie brand back from its acquirers last year, but have eschewed brick and mortar locations for a pivot into CPG. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs Mark Rampolla and Jon Sebastiani both bought back the company’s they founded, Zico and Krave, respectively, via the venture firms they subsequently founded.

According to The International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) there’s plenty of opportunity in ice cream, but some potential pitfalls. In 2022, the group notes, U.S. producers made over 1.3 billion gallons of ice cream, with premium and regular ice cream accounting for 80% of the market. Still, 83% of consumers “prefer to purchase ice cream at the grocery store and eat it at home. Only 27% purchase from a local scoop shop, with a slightly greater (30%) purchasing ice cream from national chains like Baskin Robbins.

Meanwhile, it seems Smith and Cuscuna have learned a valuable lesson.

“We’ll be taking it slowly this time around, but eventually hope to be in the right spots,” the brand shared on Instagram, adding in another post “We know not everyone gets a second chance after making some big mistakes. We are humbled and honored to come back and we will work with love and passion to make it right this time around.”