Before I entered the ice cream business, I was a 22-year-old who had just quit his job after his boss yelled at him for being too nice. I had no clue what I’d do next. Then my cousin Kim called.
This was in 2011, before she and I had launched the cart in Portland, Oregon, that became Salt & Straw, a trailblazing ice cream operation with shops up and down the West Coast and millions of die-hard fans. For decades, Kim had dreamt of opening a little neighborhood ice cream shop. She had called me to catch up and told me that, after a career at Starbucks dating back to when there were only 30 stores, she was moving back to Portland to make her ice cream dream into a reality.
Immediately I knew, more than I had ever known anything in my entire life, that I needed to be the one who made the ice cream...