Comment of the Week
“What happened to the ice cream company the New York Times dubbed ‘Brooklyn’s Most Beloved’?”
Marker readers weigh in on the shocking rise and fall of Ample Hills
After months of reporting, Courtney Rubin landed The Big Scoop: In her feature for Marker, Rubin wrote about the spectacular rise and fall of Ample Hills, the beloved ice cream company born out of Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights neighborhood, which had all the trappings of a corporate fairy tale — $19 million in funding, a deal with Disney, and a cultlike following — before its implosion; the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last March, just shy of its 10th anniversary.
The brainchild of married co-founders, Brian Smith and Jackie Cuscuna, the ice cream company had ambitious expansion plans with dreams of taking over the $11 billion ice cream industry with flavors like Ooey Gooey Butter Cake and Salted Crack’d Caramel and receiving personal endorsement from Oprah. How did it all fall apart? “Interviews with Smith and Cuscuna, along with more than a dozen employees, from scoopers to executives, reveal the perils of what can happen when a hot startup puts growth ahead of business fundamentals,” writes Rubin.
