 Welcome to Adventures in Small Business. This is a collaborative effort by the U.S. Small Business Administration, Hawaii District Office, Hawaii Small Business Development Center, the MIG Center for Business and Leadership, and also the Veterans Business Outreach Center of the Pacific to showcase the stories of local entrepreneurs and small businesses. My name is Dennis Wang, and I'm from the Hawaii Small Business Development Center. And today, we have a husband and wife team who owns Uncle's Handmade Ice Cream. I'd like to welcome Paul and Barbara Logan to the show. Well, thanks for having us. Thank you, Dennis. We're happy to be here. Thank you. And I thought you have a very unique story because as a husband and wife and you co-owner of business and you're a manufacturer and distributor of your own ice cream. So, why don't we start by telling us, why did you choose Wailua as your home base of operations? Well, it was natural. I grew up in Wahewa, actually, and Laila Hulgrad, Go Mules, and then our family moved to the North Shore, Wailua, in 73. And so, it's close to home. I have a two-minute commute all the way from my house to the factory, and it's a great place to work and live and play. Great. Tell us what inspired you to start your own business, and how did you come up with the idea of making and selling ice cream? Well, we've done a lot of businesses through the years. This isn't our first one. And we were actually had a lettuce farm on the North Shore selling lettuce to restaurants on the North Shore. And once a week, we'd go to a nice farmer's market in Waimea Valley. And we'd sell the lettuce. It was an evening market, and they would often have a lot of dinners, but not a lot of dessert options. So, well, we have been in food business before. We had a restaurant years ago. And I said, well, we're here anyway. Why don't we make a dessert? Maybe we can have a little extra sales with selling a dessert. So, we came up with an ice cream sandwich, thinking that people are walking around. Maybe they're holding a bag. So, they need a one-handed thing to eat. So, the ice cream sandwich seemed like a natural. And we gave it a try. We brought 20 of them one week, and they sold out. They were gone. Well, that was interesting. Well, so, the next week, we brought 30. And same thing. Well, they're all sold out. So, at the farm, I was growing lulacoy plants. And so, we said, well, that was our first flavor. We took the lulacoy. We made the ice cream with it. We baked some cookies. And they were just like an instant success. So, that was a natural match, those two together. It was a perfect match. It was a taste of Hawaii. It was locally grown and locally made. And so, we put it out there. And the customer said, yes, give us more. Well, how long have you been in business? And how did you get your recipes? And what's unique about them? Well, first of all, we've been in business six years, just over six years now. And the recipes are basically came out from just using all natural ingredients. So, we don't use artificial flavoring. We don't use artificial colors. And we try to put as much natural flavor into the product as possible. So, instead of using banana imitation extract, or that we take 30 pounds of bananas and we peel each one, and we caramelize them, and then we make the ice cream with them. So, you get like this intense wow flavor of banana. And they're handmade, too. And they're all handmade. So, we bake the cookies ourselves, and we scoop. We have a very sore thumb to prove it. After hundreds of thousands of sandwiches, we're like, okay. So, it is a handmade product. And we try to do as high end super premium as we can. What flavors do you have? And do you offer any special flavors during certain times of the season? Absolutely. Absolutely. We have a base flavors that we have year around, of course, the vanilla, chocolate, cookies and cream, mint chip. We try to bring a lot of the Hawaiian flavors. So, like I've mentioned the Lilacoy and banana. We do a coconut. We do a macadamia nut. They grow coffee right up the hill from us in Wailua. So, we get the green coffee beans. We roast them. My brother's a coffee roaster. So, he custom roast them for us. And then, we cold brew the beans and then make the ice cream. So, we get this amazing coffee ice cream from using the local product. Seasonally, we try to change it up so that there's some variety. So, when people come, they have something different. And at Christmas time, we might have an eggnog, a pumpkin pie. Fourth of July, we'll do an apple pie all the mode type of thing. Valentine's Day, usually strawberry. And it gives me an opportunity to experiment with new things. We just came with one that I've never made before. But my first customer tastings were really successful. And that's honey lavender. And they grow lavender on Maui now. And so, we can use a local product and come up with a kind of a very different flavor. Barbara, what is your favorite? And do you find, what are the poplar favorites? Poplar favorite flavors. I think we're especially known for our flavors that come from Hawaii. My very favorite is the lilikoi. I just smashed my mic, sorry if I blew on buddy's ear out. Is the lilikoi that passion fruit flavor that's so tangy and good? And then, it must be the coffee as a close second runner up. The banana flavor we call the funky monkey is one of our very most popular flavors as well. And that's very Hawaiian. And of course, cookies and cream just seems to be everybody's favorite flavor of ice cream no matter where they're from. So, that's always a really popular one too. You mentioned too about people recognizing by just an area like Waikiki versus other areas. And could you explain a little bit more? Yeah, very true. I know Paul growing up here is aware of the different cultural communities that are found on the island. And he has recognized that different flavors are popular among the different groups. Absolutely. And Waipahu, where they recognize like lilikoi, it's a huge seller. But when we go to Waikiki, it's not known to the tourist. So that one doesn't sell at all. And so we have to kind of manage the flavor varieties depending who they go to. And we try to bring some different ones so they can learn and grow with us too, with the new taste sensations. But we know they're usually people gravitate to what they like historically. So if they know that they love cookies and cream and there's these amazing other flavors there, they'll probably buy cookies and cream anyway, because that's what they like. So we have to accommodate everybody and every taste that we can. Well in Hawaii, everybody prides themselves with being foodie and it's such a large diversity and type of food, cultures. But with this, there's a lot of people interested in starting up their own business. Food is a popular product. It is. What kind of things that you needed to do mean that you have your kitchen facility and not only manufacture, you distribute and some occasions you may retail. What licenses or what was the process? Go through. Yeah, to start up, it's actually fairly simple. You definitely need to be checked by the health department. So you have to sit down, have a conversation with them, tell them this is what I want to do. And they'll recognize is it a hazardous product? Is it potentially dangerous or like our cookies aren't dangerous? They're delicious, but they're not dangerous. Dairy ice cream is. So if you don't treat it well, if you have the temperatures go off, it could actually be have listeria and be damaging to your customers. So the health department recognizes the risk level and then make sure that you have the systems in place to manage that. Now that might sound all complicated, but at the when we started we were operating out of a community kitchen. So you rent it for five hours once a week and you go in and you make your ice cream and you make your cookies and they will come and inspect that facility to make sure it is appropriate for what you're trying to do. We also started at a farmer's market and most farmers markets require like insurance. So you have to have a little insurance in place and with those two items in place you're ready to go. My understanding is you can be inspected anytime. That's true. Green pass is all important. And when you're selling ice cream the inspectors tend to love to come by and inspect you. We got a lot of surprise visits. Yes, a lot of surprise visits and they know in the back not every sandwich that we make comes out perfectly. But we only sell the perfect ones. So some of the sandwiches go into our reject bin and it's kind of gotten known in our area. If you walk in and say any rejects today that they're available there to help us minimize those. Well from the business side operationally what were the things that you needed? Start up your business. I know you started off from the farmer's market and you eventually grew but what kind of things that you needed? Your side as owners develop heavy business growth. Well I think starting with being at the Waimea Valley farmer's market at the farmer's market there we were happy just selling our sandwiches at the farmer's market where we were selling our lettuce and we kind of branched into the wholesale side of things when Waimea Valley approached us and said you know well we've got a cafe here and people sometimes ask us about those ice cream sandwiches and you're only here on Thursday evenings and so can we sell your ice cream sandwiches and so it was kind of like well sure you know it started out small and eventually they are our very longest term and one of our very biggest customers it's been great they have two cafes one at the top of the falls and one down at the entrance and they sell our sandwiches at both of them it's been kind of fun. I see what about in terms of the facility the equipment the necessary things to operate your business from production all the way to back from behind the scenes? Right from a production standpoint given what we do it does require a lot of equipment we have to have walk-in freezers and we have probably 15 chest freezers around the plant we also have obviously need ovens and mixers and ice cream machines and so we've been fortunate that we started from a very low base and as we would sell sandwiches and get enough we said hey we have enough today to buy a freezer and then we would buy a freezer and so we could kind of accumulate the equipment as we go in that given that we had a bunch of equipment initially at the community kitchen right so after a couple of years all once we look around say gee we have quite accumulated quite a bit we had enough to have our own standalone kitchen eventually and and it's the nature of what we do that it does take a lot of equipment. Yeah well we're coming towards the end of the first segment so that why don't we continue with this as far as the backside and our next segment as we take a break. Sounds great. Okay sounds great. Thank you for joining us. Aloha I'm Wendy Lo and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at two o'clock live from Think Tech Hawaii and on our show we talk about taking your health back and what does that mean it means mind body and soul anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about whether it's spiritual health mental health fascia health beautiful smile health whatever it means let's take healthy back. Aloha. Hi I'm Rusty Komori host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. My show is based on my book also titled Beyond the Lines and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence leadership and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business sports and life which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go Beyond the Lines at 11 a.m. Aloha. Welcome back and when we continue with the same questions that as we talked about the operational side of starting your business what about as far as the support side yeah the business side can you tell us more about that. Yeah I think we're very lucky because we have two of us because otherwise as a single entrepreneur you got to wear all those hacks yourselves and so Paul pretty much runs everything to do with operations and making our amazing ice cream sandwiches and getting them out to everybody and I do all of the finance the accounting the social media the design and the legal stuff insurance all that kind of thing and it's been really great to have that division of labor it's been really amazing because it's a lot of work anyway even for two people but it's pretty neat to be able to have two people to split it between. I've had to really learn a lot because since the last time we had a business together it's been the advent of something called social media and that's not been something I've known a lot about so I've had quite a learning curve to pick up on that I knew about the accounting and the debits and credits but it's been really fun learning about social media and keeping in touch with your customers. What are some of the unique challenges or hurdles that you face in your business? The well we've been blessed but it is always a challenge I think right now with almost zero unemployment in Hawaii is finding great people to go on this path with you and we have been real fortunate and that's for us it's been a blessing and some just really wonderful relationships out of that. With the growth it's hard because there's never a normal whatever normal is today tomorrow you're behind the ball again so that has been a challenge. Well growth has been a challenge too although it's positive and it's what you want but then also when it grows too quickly because you have to have the equipment the facilities the manpower staff for that I mean those are big challenges and hurdles that you have to plan for. They are and one of the tenants that we go by is we have an existing customer base and we never want to grow so that we start not servicing them correctly so like in the summertime we don't take on any new customers that it's a busier season it's about we get about a 50% jump in the summer of sales and so we said during the summer if you call and ask we want to be your customer said okay we'll talk to you in September. You have a peak season. We do even though it's Hawaii and it's great ice cream all year around there is some ebb and flow to it so we do have to manage growth like that. By the way these are beautiful ice cream sandwiches and you can see some of the samples here where can you buy them I mean what can I get them? Well we are we have about 40 there's about 40 over 40 locations on the island where you can buy them in a retail setting. You can get them at all the military commissaries exchanges and mini marts and also at Whole Foods and a number of locations I think we're showing on the screen now all around the island you can see a couple of we call them our bold spots there where we need some more need some more dots but there's a lot of places on the island where you can get them and if you go to our website at unclesicecream.com you can click on the link to find the one that's nearest to you you probably find one not too far away. And also you're welcoming new retailers or dealers for you too so they can how can they become a dealer for you. Well the nice thing is we have found that the way we get new people selling our sandwiches is normally because their customers have asked them about that and so if they they get in touch with us and say that you know we have our customers have kind of said hey you know you guys would be a great place to sell some uncles ice cream what are you thinking so that's how we actually get our next customers we mostly haven't gone out and sought them they they've been come giving us a call so they can always look us up on the website. What kind of awards and recognitions have you got? Well the main recognition is from our customers they keep coming back and buying more and telling their friends and that we have gotten an award for best in Honolulu Honolulu magazine did a editor's tasting I'm not sure why they chose ice cream to do their tasting but they did and and they picked up ice cream from all over the island and they awarded us the best ice cream in Honolulu a best ice cream sandwich in Honolulu we've been written up and star advertiser and a lot of local magazines tourist magazines not paid for write-ups but just them coming to us saying hey you sound like an interesting story can we write about you and one of the most exciting things was that we were invited last year as one of the two local manufacturers to be featured in Chigasaki Japan representing Hawaii the Hawaii manufacturers at their annual Hawaii festival and that was really fun that was so great it was a big honor unique experience yes there are sister city and that's a compliment too because Japan they have such a great product they do they're very good ice cream but we brought lilacoi we brought macadamia nut and the coffee the Hawaiian coffee and and it was a two-day festival and we were sold out the first day about halfway through the first day we had a there was a busiest booth at the festival so we felt really honored well when were some of the pitfalls or mistakes that you thought that you made and learned from it and how did you oh so the probably from my side well i would say that we had i wish we knew earlier about the amazing resources that are available here to help people who are starting out in small business we didn't know about them for the first few years for example sba the small business administration has amazing programs free resources educational programs online the small business development center where we met you and we we have just been thrilled to learn what kind of support is here the hawaii manufacturers association is amazing other local businesses helping each other who are all in the same boat here on this small island trying to make it go and we learn a lot from each other and we help each other a lot so i wish we knew about that earlier and that's one thing i would want everybody to know is watching today well plus i'm sorry i was just say operationally i'd say the big mistake we made is we tried to say yes to everybody when we started and so a customer would come up and say he could you do this or could you do that and we go of course we could we you know you just want to you just want to make everyone happy and and uh you go down to that path a little bit and all once you realize look we're a small company with very limited resources and we're going in five different directions now because i said yes all the time you have to learn to say no that that would be a lesson and have to say what is your path what's your core competency and where do you want to initially really marshal your resources and when people say hey could you do this you say yes but not now and and you know where we do a lot of not now's right now well we met because you had signed up for advisory services which was no fees and one of the questions that you had is how quickly can we expand whether milestones do we have to accomplish and what type of options and you know it's it's it's a very challenging and interesting question because people always want to grow but sometimes when you grow too quickly it can harm you and you don't want to go too slowly too when you grow what are the things that you need and so that's what we discussed our cost yeah it's been great we have like paul just kind of described a sort of a our process was bootstrapping basically in the beginning years and we've kind of reached a point where we realized the next leap is going to require more in terms of financial resources and business planning then we've had to learn yet and so we were really excited to learn about resources like yourself and the small business development center who could help us with can you help us kind of lay out a plan that makes sense so that when we can go out and successfully get financing for our ideas and make this dream a reality as a business advisor I often find when I console or an encounter clients or business people there a lot of times actually they're you add they're not adequately capital so they don't have enough to expand and they're stuck in a no place and they don't have the resources to grow or even to adequately fund their business but at you mentioned as a strength from the early get go that you got into knowing your post your banker can you tell us about that in your part that was one thing we did right which was I like to say before we were in dire straits before we had an emergency we went out and sought a relationship with a banker and I'm so glad we did because I could you know and again another important thing keep your books keep your taxes current because when you need a banker you're going to have to have those ducks in a row yeah but it's really been great because before we got a chance to get to know him he knows us and he's been able to look ahead for us and say I predict that you're going to be needing this down the road and if you guys would start doing this start implementing this program if you could start keeping track of this then I think I'll be able to help you when the time comes and it's been amazing that is a great resource and I recommend everybody do that get out ahead of that oh what do you see in the future for uncles are there plans that you can share with us or goals that you have we're focusing this year on expanding to more areas on a wall as we mentioned before there's some pockets Waikai and that we're not we don't have a presence and we'd like to and we've been requested to so it's just getting out there and getting those locations up and running we'd like to get to Maui and the other islands we've been requested a lot to go over there and the probably medium term plan is some of our national customers have asked if we could supply them on the mainland so there is a bigger arena out there that we're looking at too the big market that would be a huge step for us and I think for any Hawaiian company that you know and they've done it you know King's sweet bread has gone nationwide and Bobby's ice cream has gone nationwide you know so there's some really great success stories out of Hawaii that have started small like us and we're using them as inspiration and saying okay that's we want to be like that and seems like the opportunities there so we're uh that's our one of our goals the Hawaii brand is a strong one and you've been close to the community and you're starting from the farmers market and your relationship is growing up on the island and what type of involvement or where do you see your community relationship continue well we we um we got a lot of input from other small businesses that were a little further down the path than us when we started up and we try to do the same to uh new starts that are mostly in the food business because that's obviously what we do and we can give them advice on locations and resources how to get into the military how to get to Whole Foods you know and we try to mentor them and and share whatever information might be helpful to them and that we uh definitely participating in the Food Manufacturers Association the Chamber of Commerce and doing benefits to both local non-profits we like to benefit we got a few seconds left and why don't we enjoy this wonderful ice cream and maybe if you can tell us just briefly about the emerging leaders class that you're with oh that is so exciting and thank you for telling us about it how we found out about it the SBA has an amazing program called emerging leaders and uh it is for businesses that are established have been in business for some years have reached a certain level of growth and its mentorship for a period of six months with a group of other like-minded entrepreneurs to get the kind of help you need to take your business to the next level great well thank you for bringing some of these samples with you and it's very delicious and I mean lavender and a coffee and a funky monkey well I'm not gonna thank you very much for your time on the program and we've enjoyed having you here oh we loved it thank you thank you