In 1996, Kim Malek, CEO and co-founder together with her cousin Tyler Malek of craft ice cream firm Salt & Straw, dreamed of opening an ice cream store in Portland, Oregon. “After I moved right here, I used to be struck by the expertise of actually assembly individuals on the road who turned a few of my closest pals,” Kim Malek tells Entrepreneur.
Portland is a “community-driven beacon,” Kim Malek says, so town was a pure spot to determine a third place that might deliver individuals collectively. She labored at Starbucks in its early days, and the espresso chain additionally leaned into the concept of an area the place clients might collect exterior of the house or work.
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Salt & Straw. Tyler Malek, left; Kim Malek, proper.
Salt & Straw (named for the way ice cream was made again within the day: frozen with rock salt and stored chilly with straw) was based in 2011. Over the previous decade-plus, it is come a good distance — from a single pushcart to a multi-city following due to its creative flavors and neighborhood focus.
The corporate has expanded to areas in Arizona, California, Florida, Nevada and Washington, with its first two New York Metropolis retailers opening later this month. Moreover, Salt & Straw has seen a 27% four-year compound annual development price (CAGR) since 2020, per the corporate.
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Tyler Malek serves as Salt & Straw’s head of innovation and helps form the corporate’s month-to-month rotating menu sequence — September’s apple sequence boasts creations like “Apple Cider Donuts” and “Inexperienced Apple Wasabi Sorbet” — alongside everlasting classics comparable to “Sea Salt with Caramel Ribbons” and “Salted, Malted, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough.”
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Salt & Straw
Through the years, Salt & Straw’s dedication to neighborhood has held agency, serving as a through-line in every thing the corporate does, Kim Malek says. That spirit extends to the native companies Salt & Straw companions with for taste collaborations, its storefronts, the encircling communities and its personal crew dynamics.
“You get to seek out out about one thing you won’t have recognized about by our ice cream.”
Salt & Straw has at all times aimed to craft a menu that displays the neighborhood, that includes numerous farmers, artisans and makers in its flavors.
In Portland, a few of the firm’s many native companions embody chocolate manufacturing facility and cafe Cloudforest, which has collaborated on flavors like “Cloudforest Chocolate Ishpingo & Mango” and “Cloudforest’s Cocoa Hazelnut Magic Shell”; Sokol Blosser Vineyard, which helped create the hit “Pink Rosé and Watermelon Sorbet”; Durant Olive Mill, which is behind “Arbequina Olive Oil”; craft canned cocktail firm Straightaway Cocktails, which launched its “Lemon Mari Gold Amaro Sherbet” in Could; and the non-profit meals upcycler City Gleaners, which helped deliver to life “Day-Previous Bread Pudding and Chocolate Ganache.”
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Salt & Straw additionally boasts an revolutionary partnership with Portland-based, literary-inspired perfumery Imaginary Authors. They collaborated on the wearable scent “A Whiff of Waffle Cone,” which incorporates notes of vanilla, Saigon cinnamon and heavy cream, amongst others, and on three edible fragrances — “A Cloud of Cocoa,” “Swoon of Citrus” and “A Plume of Blooms.” They add one other layer to ice cream, which is often too chilly to be aromatic.
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Salt & Straw
When Salt & Straw opened its first retailer exterior of Portland in Los Angeles, Malek says the corporate thought of exporting substances from its house base, however it then opted to do issues “the laborious approach” and work with native companies to create flavors that had been reflective of the neighborhood.
“We search for a mixture of of us that may present an expertise for our friends that is these house run hits that you just’re enthusiastic about,” Malek says, “and you then get to seek out out about one thing you won’t have recognized about by our ice cream.”
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“We create an area the place persons are enthusiastic about these attention-grabbing ice cream flavors.”
In its shops, Salt & Straw prioritizes a “one-meets-one visitor expertise,” the place clients can depend on the employees’s full consideration, Malek explains. To that finish, Salt & Straw could be very intentional with its worker deployment mannequin, making certain crew members can spend ample time reviewing the menu with clients and answering any questions.
“It ends in some magical issues taking place in our shops,” Malek says.
Prospects will typically chat with one another as properly. “We create an area the place persons are enthusiastic about these attention-grabbing ice cream flavors,” she explains. “They need to discuss, and that results in extra speaking; they need to join with one another. Like, ‘Did you attempt the honey balsamic strawberry taste? You are going to adore it.'”
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Salt & Straw
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In accordance with Malek, Salt & Straw retailers deliver collectively individuals from totally different generations and walks of life and even assist facilitate some maybe surprising connections — marriage proposals and job provides have been recognized to occur in line.
On the very least, “it is common that somebody buys a scoop on the finish of the expertise for the individual they met behind them in line,” Malek says.
Salt & Straw can also be devoted to giving again to the communities that encompass its retailers. Staff stroll the blocks round retailers a number of instances a day to gather trash, Malek says, and normal managers are paid to attend neighborhood affiliation conferences, very like a neighborhood store proprietor would, to get entangled on the grassroots degree.
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The corporate additionally collaborates with native elementary faculties yearly for a scholar inventor sequence, which supplies college students an opportunity to invent their very own ice cream flavors. The profitable flavors find yourself in Salt & Straw shops, and the corporate donates 15% of these flavors’ proceeds to the colleges that invented them. The continuing nature of such packages “rounds out this neighborhood aspect,” Malek says.
“We put quite a lot of effort into staying related as a neighborhood with one another.”
Malek says Salt & Straw’s dedication to neighborhood begins inside the firm itself. Which means organising intentional communication factors, just like the month-to-month city halls the place your entire firm can name in to listen to updates and ask questions. Salt & Straw additionally has a digital platform the place individuals throughout the corporate can join and get to know one another — exchanging info or perhaps a podcast advice.
Salt & Straw additionally encourages and supplies a funds for shops to attach with one another, generally internet hosting contests so staff on the profitable retailer can have the evening off. And, each October, all the normal managers collect in Portland.
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“We get collectively yearly and have a studying occasion,” Malek says. “We’re all scattered all through totally different areas and locations, however we put quite a lot of effort into staying related as a neighborhood.”
Today, she’s trying ahead to reinventing the chocolate taco by Salt & Straw’s partnership with Taco Bell, saying it might give the corporate “a runway to do some actually thrilling revolutionary issues sooner or later that the world has by no means seen relating to ice cream,” and, after all, to the upcoming retailer openings in New York Metropolis.
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Salt & Straw
“We put quite a lot of effort into staying related as a neighborhood with one another.”
Malek says New York Metropolis has lengthy been probably the most requested location, however Salt & Straw needed to take its time discovering the appropriate spot.
“We did not need to enter New York Metropolis in a flashy vacationer location,” she explains. “We needed to go to neighborhood spots the place we might humbly get to know of us who reside there and be a part of that area people. In order that’s how we considered it.”
Salt & Straw will open at 540 Hudson Avenue within the West Village and 360 Amsterdam Avenue on the Higher West Aspect. Within the days forward, the corporate will host a sequence of pop-ups with native icons, serving up ice cream and cookies at Levain Bakery on September 6, bagel ice cream sandwiches at PopUp Bagels on September 7 and babka sundaes at Breads Bakery on September 8.
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Malek is happy to introduce Salt & Straw to New York’s communities — and to preserve innovating alongside the best way.
“My biggest hope is that Salt & Straw will likely be remembered as a revolutionary participant in what it means to work in our trade and be in that neighborhood place, not just for our friends but in addition for our crew members — [that’s] my dream long run,” she says.