[HN Gopher] The Shocking Meltdown of Ample Hills, Brooklyn's Hot...
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The Shocking Meltdown of Ample Hills, Brooklyn's Hottest Ice Cream
Company
Author : uptown
Score : 26 points
Date : 2021-02-04 13:12 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (marker.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (marker.medium.com)
| h2odragon wrote:
| Ice cream is a particular bitch to scale; it seems. Look at Blue
| Bell. Either you lose the delicate fats (fake ice cream blah) or
| you get contamination problems, or you stay small batch.
| gsk22 wrote:
| Is it actually hard to scale or just expensive? Breyers mass-
| produced "non-fake" ice cream for years (at a high price point)
| before switching to the fake stuff more recently.
|
| I'm guessing most people just aren't willing to pay $8 for a
| quart of real ice cream when there's "almost" ice cream for $3.
| pradn wrote:
| This is really unfortunate - their ice cream is some of the best
| I've had. They took a risk in trying to scale up rapidly and paid
| the price. It is what it is.
| striking wrote:
| Is it really so unfortunate? They seem to still be
| operating[1][2][3], just without the froth.
|
| 1: https://www.amplehills.com/
|
| 2: https://twitter.com/amplehills
|
| 3: https://order.trycaviar.com/ample-hills
| marcinzm wrote:
| As I see it, with physical goods, unlike software, production
| costs go up with revenue. So you can't simply growth hack your
| way out of fundamental inefficiencies.
| mdorazio wrote:
| Yes and no. With physical products, it's usually non-linear due
| to economies of scale. The more you make, the cheaper the unit
| cost gets. But there are often other challenges with scale,
| like distribution and large capital injections needed to order
| raw materials and scale up factories.
| dundermuffl1n wrote:
| TLDR: they didn't do much math on the revenues and expenses.
|
| Even with a product that's an outright winner, it is hard to be
| successful if you do not have basic financial sense.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I feel fundamentally, we are in a time where, every business is a
| unicorn and needs hyper growth. It's like grow at all cost, you
| can do it if you throw enough money at it. While it may be
| feasible for some businesses, most require strong fundamentals to
| survive for long.
| romwell wrote:
| Everything aside, props to headline writers for coming up with
| that "Ice Cream Meltdown" title.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Same thing happened at our local Great Midwestern Ice Cream
| Company. They expanded, had several stores. Built a factory and
| Boom! bankrupt.
|
| Just because you like ice cream, is no reason to think you should
| run a business. You have to like business.
| tpmx wrote:
| It's kind of hard to feel bad for a marketing-driven company
| failing.
| FriedrichN wrote:
| Bill Hicks on Marketing
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHEOGrkhDp0
| marcinzm wrote:
| People seem to have actually liked the ice cream. Most every
| company will do marketing, nothing evil about that.
| thomaslangston wrote:
| That appellation seems inappropriate in this case. They made
| good ice cream. At least it was good to me. And the customer
| service I received at multiple locations was good too.
|
| The only marketing I received was word of mouth referral.
| prawn wrote:
| Admittedly, I didn't read the full story, but the bits I did
| read included a mid-life crisis guy taking courses to learn to
| make ice cream and growing a business with the support of his
| partner.
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(page generated 2021-02-05 23:00 UTC)