Ample Hills' founders lost the brand to bankruptcy, then bought it back for $150K

Brian Smith and Jackie Cuscuna put their $225,000 in life savings into the first Ample Hills Creamery in Brooklyn in 2011, an instant success built on quirky flavours. A Disney partnership for Star Wars flavours, proposed by Bob Iger and including a storefront in Disney World, set them, in Harvard economist Thomas Eisenmann's words, on a cycle of raising outside capital, borrowing from a bank and taking venture equity for the first time. At its peak Ample Hills had 13 scoop shops and a $40 million valuation, according to a November 2023 Yahoo Finance article.

To keep up with demand they built a factory, raising $20 million over several venture rounds plus bank loans backed by a personal guarantee. They struggled to find investors who knew the industry, the factory had production problems, and they overspent on custom rectangular pints and a Los Angeles shop in a Craftsman-style bungalow. Eisenmann said they did not pay enough attention to financial discipline and tracking cash in and out.

Investors would not put in more, so the couple filed for business bankruptcy in 2020, and for personal bankruptcy six months later, and sold Ample Hills to an Oregon-based manufacturing company for $1 million. After time off, Cuscuna took an online course for entrepreneurs restarting after a failed venture and met adviser Norm Brodsky, who invested in their new shop, The Social, which opened in 2021.

They restarted with better record-keeping and budgeting, a few knowledgeable investors and the same fresh, homemade-ingredient ideals, planning to scale only if the first shop met performance targets. In 2022 they bought Ample Hills back for $150,000. They told CNBC that in July 2023 their two businesses together brought in $300,000 to $400,000, that each shop was profitable, and that they would approach growth very slowly.

Bought Ample Hills back for $150,000 in 2022 after its $1M sale; by July 2023 two profitable shops brought in $300,000–$400,000 combined revenue.

The Disney deal pulled them into outside capital, bank debt and venture equity for the first time, a cycle Eisenmann likened to catching a tiger by the tail.

A factory financed with venture money and personal-guarantee loans turned demand into a fixed-cost bet before operations were proven.

Weak tracking of cash and overspending on custom pints and a showpiece Los Angeles shop left no reserve when investors declined to fund more.

The relaunch tied growth to targets: budgets, better records, informed investors and scaling only if the first shop performed.

Fast growth financed by debt and venture money can hide weak cash discipline; the rebuild worked because expansion was tied to performance targets, budgets and informed investors.

As of the November 2023 article, Ample Hills had made a cautious return that summer, reopening its original Brooklyn storefront plus three others in New York City. The two businesses had over 100,000 social media followers between them, and Smith said they would focus on getting systems and operations tight before brand building again.