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 folks on the road who turned a few of my closest associates,” 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 may deliver folks collectively. She labored at Starbucks in its early days, and the espresso chain additionally leaned into the thought of an area the place prospects may collect outdoors of the house or work.
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Salt & Straw. Tyler Malek, left; Kim Malek, proper.
Salt & Straw (named for a 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 because of its ingenious flavors and community focus.
The corporate has expanded to areas in Arizona, California, Florida, Nevada and Washington, with its first two New York City retailers opening later this month. Moreover, Salt & Straw has seen a 27% four-year compound annual growth rate (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 collection — September’s apple collection boasts creations like “Apple Cider Donuts” and “Inexperienced Apple Wasabi Sorbet” — alongside everlasting classics similar to “Sea Salt with Caramel Ribbons” and “Salted, Malted, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough.”
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Salt & Straw
Over time, Salt & Straw’s commitment to community has held agency, serving as a through-line in all the things the corporate does, Kim Malek says. That spirit extends to the native companies Salt & Straw companions with for taste collaborations, its storefronts, the encompassing communities and its personal workforce dynamics.
“You get to search out out about one thing you may not have identified about by our ice cream.”
Salt & Straw has at all times aimed to craft a menu that displays the group, that includes varied farmers, artisans and makers in its flavors.
In Portland, among the firm’s many native companions embrace 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 Winery, 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 Urban Gleaners, which helped deliver to life “Day-Outdated Bread Pudding and Chocolate Ganache.”
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Salt & Straw additionally boasts an modern 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 outdoors of Portland in Los Angeles, Malek says the corporate thought of exporting substances from its dwelling base, but it surely then opted to do issues “the onerous means” and work with local businesses to create flavors that had been reflective of the group.
“We search for a mixture of of us that can present an expertise for our company that is these dwelling run hits that you simply’re enthusiastic about,” Malek says, “and then you definately get to search out out about one thing you may not have identified about by our ice cream.”
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“We create an area the place persons are enthusiastic about these fascinating ice cream flavors.”
In its shops, Salt & Straw prioritizes a “one-meets-one visitor expertise,” the place customers can depend on the workers’s full consideration, Malek explains. To that finish, Salt & Straw may be very intentional with its worker deployment mannequin, making certain workforce members can spend ample time reviewing the menu with prospects and answering any questions.
“It leads to some magical issues occurring in our shops,” Malek says.
Clients will typically chat with one another as properly. “We create an area the place persons are enthusiastic about these fascinating ice cream flavors,” she explains. “They wish to speak, and that results in extra speaking; they wish to connect with one another. Like, ‘Did you attempt the honey balsamic strawberry taste? You are going to like it.'”
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Salt & Straw
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Based on Malek, Salt & Straw retailers deliver collectively folks from totally different generations and walks of life and even assist facilitate some maybe sudden connections — marriage proposals and job provides have been identified to occur in line.
On the very least, “it is common that somebody buys a scoop on the finish of the expertise for the particular person they met behind them in line,” Malek says.
Salt & Straw can be devoted to giving back to the communities that encompass its retailers. Staff stroll the blocks round retailers a number of occasions 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 become involved on the grassroots stage.
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The corporate additionally collaborates with native elementary colleges yearly for a scholar inventor collection, 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 continued nature of such packages “rounds out this group ingredient,” Malek says.
“We put a variety of effort into staying related as a group with one another.”
Malek says Salt & Straw’s commitment to community begins inside the firm itself. Which means organising intentional communication factors, just like the month-to-month town 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 folks throughout the corporate can join and get to know one another — exchanging data or perhaps a podcast advice.
Salt & Straw additionally encourages and supplies a finances for shops to attach with one another, generally internet hosting contests so workers on the profitable retailer can have the night time off. And, each October, the entire normal managers collect in Portland.
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“We get collectively every year and have a learning event,” Malek says. “We’re all scattered all through totally different areas and locations, however we put a variety of effort into staying related as a group.”
Nowadays, she’s trying ahead to reinventing the chocolate taco by Salt & Straw’s partnership with Taco Bell, saying it may give the corporate “a runway to do some actually thrilling modern issues sooner or later that the world has by no means seen in the case of ice cream,” and, after all, to the approaching retailer openings in New York Metropolis.
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Salt & Straw
“We put a variety of effort into staying related as a group with one another.”
Malek says New York City has lengthy been probably the most requested location, however Salt & Straw needed to take its time discovering the fitting spot.
“We did not wish to enter New York Metropolis in a flashy vacationer location,” she explains. “We needed to go to neighborhood spots the place we may humbly get to know of us who reside there and be a part of that local people. In order that’s how we considered it.”
Salt & Straw will open at 540 Hudson Road within the West Village and 360 Amsterdam Avenue on the Higher West Aspect. Within the days forward, the corporate will host a collection 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 worked up to introduce Salt & Straw to New York’s communities — and to keep innovating alongside the way in which.
“My best hope is that Salt & Straw will likely be remembered as a revolutionary participant in what it means to work in our business and be in that group place, not just for our company but additionally for our workforce members — [that’s] my dream long run,” she says.