Marketing, Merch and the Great Sugar Cone Debate - Wes Bechtel from Boombalatti's

Wes from Boombalatti's joins us again to get us an update on what he is doing this year for his merch lines, we also talk Palm Springs, and Wes tries to justify his love for Sugar Cones.

Interested in your thoughts.

For more info on Boombalatti's go to:

• https://boombalattis.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/boombalattis
• https://www.tiktok.com/@boombalattis

For information about the North American Ice Cream Assoc, and how you can open and grow your ice cream business with a community that will support you, go to https://icecreamassociation.org/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Hey there folks, welcome to the Ice Cream Podcast. It is the official podcast of the North American Ice Cream Association, where as you know, we are all about ice cream people, helping ice cream people. Return guest, Wes from Boom Balades. Nice to have you on.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

It's nice to be back, Steve. Let's let's run it back. Let's do it again.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

I always have a problem spelling your last name. Do I not? Is it always spelt wrong in uh communications and emails?

SPEAKER_00 0:31

I don't think so.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

I think I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

I Bechtel? It's Bechtel, yeah. Okay. So but there's an H in there, but it doesn't really so there are lots of weird spellings that I see, but I don't feel like you've spelled it wrong. Origin? Origin. German.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Ah, of course. Of course it's German. German.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Yeah, yeah. Bactel.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

How many uh generations uh have your uh uh uh family been in the US here?

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Man, I feel like I should know the answer to that. I I just found this website, like ideagrave.com or something like that. Yeah. I had never heard of it. I forget how I got to it. And I was able to trace back into the 1700s just on one of my branches. Did you say digagrave.com? No, I ideagrave.com, I think.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Oh, ideagrave. I was gonna say I think that's digging a grave.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

I was looking for something else, and and this came up, and then I didn't know it existed. And it it's gravestones, and then it's all volunteer, and then they'll attach the obituary to it. And so I I found is like the obituary then has you know survived by or the parents of, and then you search that person, and some of the branches dead end, but one got all the way back in the 1700s. So when I'm not so busy, which is something I say all the time, I'm gonna try to dive into that and see what I can find.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

But well, if you need help digging a grave, we won't talk about it. We won't talk about it on this pod, but it might be used as evidence. Yeah, let's stop the recording before that. Mate, um, a couple of things I want to talk to you about. One more controversial than the other, but we've just on the tail end of our visit, the board visit out to Palm Springs. Uh, have you ever been there before?

SPEAKER_00 2:11

No, I had not. I've only really been to the West Coast once before, but that was San Diego and LA, so I had never been Palm Springs.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

Mate, impressions? I mean, I've been out there three or four times now in signing contracts and visiting and meeting with people, but um, what was your take?

SPEAKER_00 2:26

I thought it was beautiful. Um it was only the second time I've ever flown over the desert. So ConeCon in Vegas was the first time I saw sort of what that area of the country looks like from above, so I got to do that again. Flying over Joshua Tree was kind of amazing. And then Palm Springs. I mean, I guess if you know Palm Springs, you already know this, but it's just this greenery in the middle of the desert. And I I thought the architecture was beautiful. I like my favorite era is that Rat Pack era, the 50s, and and I just felt like everywhere you looked, you saw that. Um, all the houses, and then the airport was super like open-air airport, which I've I've ever seen like in a Caribbean island. I think people are gonna be really excited about it. And I also didn't know like two other things that stood out. It's it's not a big city, like it's a relatively small city. Uh, it's walkable. And then to have the hotel and the convention center, a six-minute Uber ride from the airport is incredible because when you fly across country, the last thing you want to do is get in a 35-minute Uber.

unknown 3:29

Right.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

So be six minutes away from the airport, and then you're on vacation. I loved it. I I'm excited to go back. I think Chris and I are gonna try to bookend it at three or four days on either side of it and make a whole time out of it.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

Yeah, you could literally if you had to, you could walk from the airport to the hotel.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

And I don't recommend it, but it's either gonna be a hundred degrees or yeah, it was temperature when I was there, when we were there.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

Yeah, the only time the only time this year it's been like in the forties and raining, and it was the three days.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

It's actually cooler there than it was in Wilmington while I was there, which was a little ironic.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

Yeah, I can't wait. It's uh the people are great, the architecture's great, facilities great. Um it's gonna be a good time. Um okay, let's talk uh last time we had you on, we s we spoke about merch. And uh you seem to be like the bit of the merch king of the association so far as um knowledge and sales and different things. What can we expect this year at Boom Balades merch wise?

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Um great question. I do love merch. Um, I like to wear it more than the Penn State ice cream thing, you know. Good merch. You wear it, you show it off, and now you're advertising for somebody else's business, and that's what that's our goal. So um some trends like heavyweight garment washed blanks, tees, seem to be popular right now. Uh where I am in the coastal North Carolina. That's a little odd to me because it it's a heavy shirt that you're wearing when it's a hundred million degrees outside, but that's what the kids like. So we're looking at a lot of earth tones. Um I don't know, if you look outside and you see it in the in the world, those are the colors that are kind of popular right now. Camo is continuing to have a huge moment. Uh so we do this like uh color-on-color embroidery where the embroidery matches the sweatshirt. So I think we're gonna do two colors of that, and then we're gonna do a camo with like safety orange as the embroidery. So that's gonna be sort of the the limited edition sweatshirt that we're gonna see how that does. And then I'm always, you know, I'm always a big fan of just finding local artists in your community who are doing other projects. So we've got three artists that are working on new shirts right now, uh, two that have already done shirts for us in the past. But you know, seeing giving them a very short, like very small amount of like I want a shirt that sort of is for this target market, and then letting them run with it, like not giving them 600 different things that they have to do, uh, has been a huge like that's been the best thing for us. They they give me designs that are so much better than I would have come up with on my own.

SPEAKER_02 6:10

And is that you when you say partnering up, are you hey, uh, here's my budget design something for me? Could it is there a ever revenue share type deal, or is it just we've never done a revenue share?

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Um, I I just say whatever, like tell me what your art is worth and I will pay it. I don't haggle, I don't we don't negotiate. If you tell me your art's 250 bucks, I'll pay you $250. Um we don't put a huge markup on our shirts, so I know like at some point, you know, it it's gonna take a bunch of shirts before you pay off the 250. And then, but you know, I I want to make money off of merch, but it's not like I'm trying to to get the cheapest art and the cheapest t-shirts and the no, it's like I want it to be nice, I want it to be on the top of your dresser drawer and not the one that floats to the bottom because you never wear it. But I mean, I think a lot of art, in my view, is kind of under underpriced. Uh, sometimes I've had people say, Yeah, $100-125. And now I I do think that we sell a lot of merch and we're very visible in Wilmington. So I think there's a benefit to that. That if they design a shirt for us and we're selling hundreds of them, and people say, Who designed that? and I point to who it is, and and we'll put their name on the tags as well. So I'm sure there's some of that too. I don't trade for that, like that's not my pitch. Right. I think that's a little slimy, but by all means, I'll put your name and your Instagram handle on the merch tag and send people your way.

SPEAKER_02 7:33

Is that your it's is that the general um expense? 100 150 to 450 kind of deal?

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Yeah, I'd say anything 250 is about the max for a t-shirt design. More than that, and like we do pay for signage and stuff, we'll pay for a bigger budget. Um, but if you know, if it's $500 for a t-shirt design, we're really gonna have to sell a lot of t-shirts to make any of that back. Um, we did an artist series sticker um series in 2020 and 2021, come kind of coming out of the pandemic, like trying to do positivity. And now we paid $100 per sticker design, and we got three from each artist, and then we sold the stickers for two dollars. So, like we that was a we lost money on every single one of those stickers. So there are some times when it's like I'm this is a we're gonna lose money on this, but we're gonna do it for other reasons. Yeah, but merch is definitely a a profit, a profitable part of our business, and we don't want to skip on it too much.

SPEAKER_02 8:31

Well, it's hard to kind of also assign that to a cost center because how many people are coming in just because of the vibe and they see it out and that kind of thing. Yeah. I like it. Camo, really. I don't think I'll put a ditch of camo on my life.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Like, like in almost an ironic way. Like people who would not have any reason to wear camo are now wearing oversized camo sweatshirts. And and there's always this fear that, like, you know, by the time I notice, you know, a 46-year-old dad, what is like trendy, if I jump on it too late, you know, it takes three weeks to get the shirts in or whatever, and get them on the racks. Like, the fear is we don't wear camo anymore. Like, who wears camo? And it's like we were wearing camo two weeks ago. So there's always a little risk of that. So a lot of times, if we do something that we're trying to jump on a trend, we will make a smaller print run of that. Yeah. So it is limited, so you can sell it as limited. And also if it doesn't sell, we're not. I I did it, I did an experiment two years ago where I wanted to see if I could sell ice cream-related merchandise that did not have boombalades on it. That my hypothesis failed. We still have a ton of them, they're on our clearance rack, nobody wants them. Um, I was interested to see if like we could just turn it into sort of a clothing brand, but the answer to that was no. So that was a swing we took and we struck out on that one.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

Strengthen the brand, though. It's got to be a tip of the hat to the strength of someone wanting your brand on their shirt. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Well, this was the opposite. This we we didn't put our brand on the shirt. That's what I'm saying. And I didn't sell. And they didn't sell, correct? So people want it.

unknown 10:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

People are like, if your brand is not on the shirt, then why would I want to pay for it? I'm like, oh good point. Also, if anybody's thinking about merch and you live in any area in which people travel, always put the city name on your shirt. That's half the reason people are buying merch is to say they were in Wilmington, NC, or St. Louis, Missouri. Or I've seen shirts where it's like, I I own shirts where I'm like, part of the reason I bought the shirt was because of the city, like I was on vacation, and it's crazy to me that it doesn't say the city name on it.

SPEAKER_02 10:36

Yeah. Um, is it a challenge if there's a year on it? I have one of those, I have one of your Penn State sweatshirts on it. And it's like 19.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

I think if you if you went to something, like if you ran a marathon or you went to a class, then it makes sense. But we've also done that, we've sold uh these t-shirts, this was years ago now, but it was like I don't even remember what year, it might have been summer 17. And it's weird to put those shirts out during summer 18 because you haven't slipped through all of them. And there's always in the whole merch thing, is the the biggest pain point is like what do you do when you're getting low in something? Like, do you do a reorder? Like one of our most popular shirts, we just reordered them, but we're totally out of mediums and larges, so we have them on the rack, and it's like extra small, small, extra large three X. Like, we will very soon, but you know, if we elect to retire that shirt, now it you know, if you have a whole bunch of three X's and extra smalls, it's it's really difficult to try to like get through those. You discount them, but now where do you put them? Do you get a discounted rack? So there's also that thought, too, that like we don't necessarily like almost every single year we have two base shirts that we just use forever, and that way we can always we can reorder larger quantities, which gets you a cheaper per shirt price. So if this is the first time you've come to Boom Lates on vacation, you're probably gonna get what we call our signature tea. But if you live here and you come here all the time, then you go straight to the new stuff. And so there's it's good to have a balance of both.

SPEAKER_02 12:12

Yeah, that's awesome. Uh good merch talk. I'll have a bit of merch talk. I'm assuming um uh you're leaning heavily into Clem. Yeah, supply supplier, uh member supplier, merch, t-shirt, all sorts of things.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Yep. Clempire, but he's a supplier member, and it's been the last two shows. Uh he's done the organization's shirts for the last two come cons. And uh there's a rumor out there that this year's shirts might be a little different, might be a little cool.

SPEAKER_02 12:38

So we'll see what happens.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Well, you're saying a little cool, are you saying that the previous ones weren't cool or what what they're cool, but to my point earlier about like really focusing on location, yeah. Um, they didn't really say, like, hey, this is a Fort Worth shirt or this is a Las Vegas shirt, and so I'm gonna help the organization this year with one of my artist friends, and we're gonna try to uh do that, like make a very Palm Springs specific and then next year we'll do a very specific shirt for that location that we'll be in. But really trying to think like if you're coming to ConeCon every year, it's a bit of a I was at Palm Springs this year, and last year I was at West Palm, and this is my West Palm shirt.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

So yeah, we'll see, but Steve Rhinestones for next year, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

But Steve doesn't actually do the screen printing, so he's the guy that knows that every single person that does embroidery and does screen printing and does this, and he can and I can say I want this shirt and this design, and he'll go out and find the the best company that is currently doing that. So he's been a really big and and we used him long before he was on his own when he was working for a screen company.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

So he's a good friend. I'll put Clampyre's link down below. He's a great resource for merch. Um mate, uh finally, uh uh controversial subject. So we do a a rapid fire top ten at the at the end of most of our podcasts. And um I think it was uh Caitlin from Claire's that uh mentioned that she was a one of the questions is are you a Cake Cone or Waffle Cone? And she said sugar cone. And I may have made some I'm not gonna say derogatory comment, but perhaps uh got me angry, yeah. Tell me, sell me, sell me on the virtues of a sugar cone, because I'm gonna can I just lay the foundation for where I'm at. Dig dig your hole. Too hard for a start. Multilayer, too much crunch. 58 years old. I'm not saying my teeth are falling out, but I just it's too it's too much crunch for me. You got a flat top that doesn't uh encapture or capture the scoop around it. You're putting uh you're putting the scoop on top so there's a lot of overhang.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:05

And you can't just kind of enjoy a conversation. You've got to you've got to be licking around that thing that's dripping down. Oh yeah, you need to lock in. So help me understand where the where the sugar cone is. Can I say also prior to recording here, I did text uh Kyle um from Joy. I asked him for first uh uh yeah, he says for food service. Uh I asked him for percentage of sales cake, cone, waffle cone, sugar cone. So we're gonna get a live update while you're while you're pitching the uh sugar cone.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

Alright, you ready?

SPEAKER_02 15:40

The time is now yours.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

I do want to say better than both cake and sugar is a freshly baked Boombalades waffle cone. Okay, so that's number one. But that aside, if I go to an extreme parlor, my choice is cake cone or sugar cone. It's sugar cone ten times out of ten. I will give you the fact that from the other side of the counter, a sugar cone is more obnoxious to scoop onto, especially if you're handing that to a seven-year-old, you you know you got a 50% chance that that ice cream is gonna hit the ground. So there is that. Uh cake, uh sugar, nice little nest or cake cone, nice little nest to put it onto. But I like the crunch. I think the flavor is better on a sugar cone. And pretty much my entire argument will come down to what the final bite, the experience of the final bite on a sugar cone, the rest of that ice cream, some of that ice cream is is dripped through. And so you've got that nice little like you've got the crunch, you've got the vanilla flavor of the cone, and then you've got whatever it was that was in that cone, and you get that all in one bite, and it's a great last bite. If you're gonna get on this podcast and tell me that the last bite of a cake cone, that like that honeycomb, no flavor, it like talk about crunch, it like hits the roof of your mouth, and you're like, what? There's no ice cream in this last bite, unless you're like really trying physically pushing your ice cream into that last bite. The number, I'll tell you this, I would be willing to bet the number of of half-inch cake cones that meet the trash can is way higher than the last half inch of sugar cones.

SPEAKER_02 17:16

That's my argument. I mean, you may be right. Uh you're basing your whole argument on the last bite of the whole thing.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

I mean, a lot of your experiences, the end of that experience is what you hold on to and what takes you back to the next. You're like, man, I need that last bite one more time. I mean, they're even making whatever though, that company, nutty buddies or whatever, it is like a sugar, the last bite of sugar cone dipped in chocolate. I don't think they're making a last bite of cake cone dipped in chocolate. There's an untapped market for you and Kyle to run for. There is a nostalgia aspect of cake cones. And from a photography standpoint, for marketing, a cake cone does sit flat, and I do like that. But sugar guns.

SPEAKER_02 17:59

I also did uh we just did a uh uh podcast with Snell Grove, and they do the double banger cat cone. Those are pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

Yeah, yeah. Um is that a joy? Does Joy do that? I think they do. I think so, yeah. I mean anything where you can sort of have the signature thing on a on a cone is a pretty cool thing. We we make both waffle cones and waffle bowls, same exact size, like we just push the thing in to make it a bowl. And we used to not display the waffle bowls for whatever reason, because I'm not a marketing genius. And we were probably selling like five to one cones to bowls, and now we just have a waffle bowl sitting on top of the dip case, and now they're almost even. And it's wild. Do you sell the waffle bowl in a cup? You do, and so a waffle bowl is actually a quarter more than a waffle cone for that reason. And yeah, but to your point earlier, like you don't have to really pay attention at that point. If you have a waffle bowl that's inside of a cup, you can have conversations, you can sit it down, sugar cone, you definitely can't. If that waffle cone's not tight on the bottom, you can't. Yeah. I have a question for you that that's controversial at times. Uh do you like a f a fresh waffle cone with something dropped on the bottom, like an MM at the bottom or a marshmallow at the bottom?

SPEAKER_02 19:13

I literally was just gonna ask you this same question. Do you know when we had stores, we would put an inverted Hershey's Kiss in the bottom. So we'd have a whole bunch of Hershey's Kisses out, and then when we'd bake the cone, we'd we'd drop an upside down Hershey's Kiss in it to kind of replicate that drumstick kind of experience. Um stacking. Yeah. Trouble with stacking. Uh they kind of were a little bit top heavy, but um look, unless it's I'm not a whopper guy, I'm not a marshmallow in the bottle, uh bottom or an MM. I I'm it's got to be something that's serious, chocolatey. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

Yeah. We we do an MM. And I will say, I don't know if they're a member, I've never looked it up, but uh I went to school outside of well, I went to school in IUP in the University of Pennsylvania, which is an hour from Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh's got an ice cream shop, Dave and Andy's, it's been there forever, and they did the MM in the bottom. And so first time I ever, again, that last bite, I was like, this is great. So we do it, but we've had complaints, we've had customers very unhappy that their last bite has chocolate in it, and you know, it's one of those things. Like, do we stop doing it? Like when I think we had a review that's like you really should tell us. I'm like, I mean, if we told every single person there's an MM at the bottom of this cone, it's a lot to do, but I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 20:35

Is there some congealing? Does the heat congeal it a little bit, or is it just literally sitting in there?

SPEAKER_00 20:40

It it will melt a little bit and then sort of re-but it's still to my palate, it's it is exactly what an MM should. Like it's got a little crispiness in the chocolate. And if because it melts a tiny bit and then resets like a Hershey Kiss, it does sort of seal that bottom a little bit. But the first time somebody complained, I was like, wow, I like we all know that like plenty of people will complain about ice cream. That was a complaint that I did not see coming. I was flabbergasted. Like apologize, I am so sorry that that MM got in there somehow. But I also need you to know that every waffle cone you get from here on out from our shop is probably gonna have one in there.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

Right, right. Uh, do you make fresh waffle cones? We do like like every day or every day.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Like our busy store, we have somebody come in usually in the summer. We'll have somebody come in an hour before we open to start making waffle cones, and we close at 10 and we don't stop making waffle cones until probably 9:30. And we'll switch off. So that's like their break. Like stop scooping, go make waffle cones for an hour. But we just use two irons, we should probably get more. But you know, it starts to be a space hogging enterprise. Yeah, yeah. We talked about, you know, what if we made waffle cones off site? We're about to build a production unit, and but now you you don't have the smell, you don't have the right, you know, the the show that's going on. But yeah, I mean we spent like if you think about How much labor a nice room shop spends a year in just pure waffle cone making? That's a lot.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

We walk in the door though and there's that smell and it's like, okay, I'm home.

SPEAKER_00 22:13

All of our merch. People ask us how our merch how we get it to smell like waffle cones, which isn't funny. Not on purpose. Like my closet just reeks of waffle cones.

SPEAKER_02 22:25

I know the um I know the uh folks from Lockhead relatively well because they're just down the road here. And every time we grab a luncho, they pop in here, it's smelling like vanilla. It's just so beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

I mean, there are worse things to smell like than waffle cones, vanilla. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

Uh okay. Well, look, we know question one, but can I hit you up with the uh rapid fire top ten? Of course.

SPEAKER_00 22:55

I hope I'm not controversial.

SPEAKER_02 22:57

Well, it it makes sense. Makes for good press. Okay, number one, cake cone, waffle cone. I'm gonna take sugar cone out. K cone, waffle cone. Walco. Walpco 100%. Chocolate or vanilla? Chocolate. Visual or non-visual dipping cabinets.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

Man, I think they both have the pros and cons. We do visual, and when it gets really busy, there are times when I wish we didn't. Really slows the line down. But we're proud of our ice cream, so visual.

SPEAKER_02 23:26

Uh blending a shake. Jug or like a blender jug or a spindle? Spindle, but one of the banes of my existence. Do you ever um I know some shops will kind of keep well for a start, do you make shakes out of every single flavor that you have? We do, and it's all hard-dipped.

SPEAKER_00 23:44

And so you don't get if what the customer wants is a soft served shake with syrup, if that's what they're thinking about, and then we give them a diluted ice cream shake, like a a strong percentage of our negative reviews are milkshake-based. It's not, it didn't have the punch that they wanted.

SPEAKER_02 24:02

So it can be a challenge. Because I know there are some places even around here that have a separate dipping cabinet that's held at about eight plus eight with vanilla and chocolate in there, and that that dipping cabinet is solely for uh shape.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

That makes a lot of sense. We getting that thing to start blending is not easy.

SPEAKER_02 24:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

I mean, we spend a lot of time, like our training program, like it's so much of it is milkshake. Are you blending in the cup you're serving from? No, I'll blend in a metal cup, dump into a plastic cup.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

Okay. Using something like a wearing or a Hamilton Beach with the little Hamilton Beach triple spindle, and then we have a a second, just a single spindle for vegan flavors.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

Right. Best flavor you ever made. Fluffernutter butter, which we still make, sandwich flavor. What the kind of the last flavor that I came up with because I hadn't been creative in a while. So based on the fluffernutter sandwich, peanut butter marshmallow, and then the nutter butter cookies inside of it, it is I think a perfect flavor.

SPEAKER_02 25:04

Do I not remember that it won an award one year?

SPEAKER_00 25:07

No, Steve. Someone else won that year with a flavor called Fluffernutter Butter, and there was a yell, there was a yell from the crowd that came from my table until that person realized it wasn't me. What'd they say?

unknown 25:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:25

That's a uh that's a tender topic then. I should have some. Worst flavor you ever made.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

So year one on uh April Fool's Day, we made real flavors, but uh we made one that was a sriracha swirl, so we made the fudge, and you know, sriracha is popular now, but it was real popular then. So we actually blended some sriracha into the fudge, but everybody thought it was a joke, so nobody got it, even though like it was balanced and it tasted good. And then we accidentally took what was left of that flavor and packed it and called it uh peanut butter ripple. So people were taking the sriracha ripple home, being like, whoa, this is not that was we learned a lot of things in that first year. And one is April Fool's Day is not the day to make weird flavors. Right, right. Uh, best promotion you ever did. I mean, thanks to golly geez, it's probably stuff you're Stanley. I mean, I would think like a promotion that we came up with. I mentioned earlier that sticker series. I mean, that was a point where like everybody just needed something to be happy about, and having and artists weren't making any money, like there was no artwork, like nobody needed new t-shirts or anything. So I think we got so much goodwill from our community, from our customers, from the art industry around Bumington. I I feel like we should probably do it again, but that's one I'm really proud of.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. My brother, Scott Christensen, is one of the most famous seascape artists, I'm gonna say, in the world.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

All right.

SPEAKER_02 26:57

When times get tough, people aren't buying art. That's kind of a luxury item. It's a challenge. So you're doing pay your bills, support your local artists. Hey, I was gonna I was just gonna ask you, something popped into my head while we were talking about artists before. Did you see that Banksy has been um unveiled?

SPEAKER_00 27:15

I saw that. I haven't read the article. I I've seen it just like the headlines. I haven't read the article yet, but I saw something yesterday that some art people think that that'll actually increase the value of his artwork now, which I find kind of fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

Just kind of an old guy like me.

SPEAKER_00 27:32

Yeah, like not what people assumed it was gonna be. No, no. First con. Uh 2019, I believe Charleston, North Carolina. Tyler from Sansra was the keynote. Yep. Um, we went because it was clear, it was a four-hour drive for us, and it was like, let's just keep going to this, and then we didn't go to the next two, and then you know, 2020 grab and 2021 we didn't go to, and then we've been to everyone since.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

Nice. Our dream cone con location, where would you love to go?

SPEAKER_00 28:06

Man, that's a good question.

SPEAKER_02 28:08

Apart from your own city. Yeah, one minute, everybody should check it out. Um every time we float this question around, Caitlin always throws in Greenville.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

Yeah, we just watched our my family top chef the first episode yesterday, which is Greenville, Charlotte. So it's nice to see if Carolina's getting some love, although they always ignore us east coasters. Um I want to go to Austin. I've never been to Austin, and I feel like there's a lot of fun, interesting stuff that happens in Austin. So I think in Texas is a warm climate. I really liked Fort Worth. I'd not been there either. So I don't know if that's my dream location. That's the first spot that I have not been to that if that came up, I'd be like, oh, that's we're definitely going to that one.

SPEAKER_02 28:50

Hmm. Okay. We're working on them, by the way. Uh, last question. Best advice. Someone's getting into the ice cream business, best advice.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

I mean, I get asked for advice a lot, business, and like I think the answer is the same. Like, if you are not passionate about whatever it is, and so if you're choosing to get into ice cream and you don't really, really love ice cream, two years later you're gonna be like, Man, I can't believe my business isn't successful. I thought I was gonna make a lot of money selling ice cream, and it never works that way. So, Chris and I are both lucky that we are not as active, you know, front of the house scooping as we were. I mean, honestly, like the first six years, like every time we would open a new shop, like I would work at that shop for 18 months to get it off the ground. And there's a lot of physicality in that. Like, yeah, you know, and I've had back surgery, so you get some issues with that. But if it wasn't ice cream, there's no way I would have done it. But even knowing how hard it was and how long the hours were, I loved it so much that that's what has helped us grow to the point where we are where now we can hire people and fill those roles. But I don't know. I I I hear people so much be like, Why'd you go into that? Well, I'll ask them. And they're like, A lot of money in it, super high profits. I'm like, that's why? Man, okay. I knew a person who's gonna open a sports clip, and I was like, Really? I had no idea you were into like haircuts. Oh no, it's one of the most profitable franchises in America. I'm like, oh, so you don't care at all about grooming. You just got a profitable business, and and then what, spend 80 hours a week there? Like, okay. Yeah, that's tough.

SPEAKER_02 30:26

Yeah, you're not gonna I mean, you could get rich in the ice cream business. There's a lot of other businesses that you could probably get more wealthy in, but there's nothing like handing a cone over to some uh kid or family, it's just there's something cathartic.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

Like in one Friday night, you could have 12 different people celebrating 12 different milestones. A graduation, a birthday, uh celebration of life, uh birth. Uh it's uh we just got engaged. I mean, how many businesses is that become routine that someone comes to celebrate at your place of business? Right.

SPEAKER_02 31:00

You're not getting a haircut when you get graduate after graduate.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

You know, I can say getting married in two days, but no, nobody is so ready at McDonald's. I mean they might, but mate.

SPEAKER_02 31:13

Um this has been wide-ranging. I'm gonna think of all the links I've got down there, but where do we find out more about boom balades?

SPEAKER_00 31:20

So the only hard part is you've got to spell it. But we're we're kind at boom baladis, we're everywhere. We're on TikTok, we're on Instagram, Facebook, boombalattes.com. You'll be able to see how it's spelled in the description of this. Um Instagram is what we do the most. So if if you wanted one place to follow what we do, that's where I would go.

SPEAKER_02 31:39

Mate, um yeah, I uh every I like the uh countdown every year. I watch uh the uh countdown to the um whatchamacallit box? Christmas box.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

Oh, advent calendars. Yeah, advent calendar, yeah. They almost killed me this year. Yeah. That's a story. I tell you about that. I almost suffocated because of dry ice. No? Tell me about it. So we were loading, so this is the first year that we shipped them, and so we're shipped, we're shipping out of two different cars, just driving across the parking lot to UPS, which shares the parking lot with us. And my production manager had filled her car up uh with about 50 boxes, 10 pounds each, that's 500 pounds of dry ice. All her windows were up. Never occurred to me. I've read all like I know it's dangerous. I got into her car, I pulled forward, and like I thought I was having an allergic reaction to her air freshener that was on her her rear view mirror because I had no, like, my body was shutting down and I didn't know why. My face was getting itchy. You're taking full breaths. Like I have had all this thoughts afterwards. Like I'm breathing normally, I'm just not breathing in any oxygen. Right. So I backed back up, basically fell out of her car. I I got her windows down pretty quickly, which is probably what saved me. Fell out of her car and went black for a while. Um, not like a long time, 30 seconds. And then I was like, That's crazy. And everything I do is like, I just find a joke and everything. So, and they were like, You should go get checked out. So I went, I went to urgent care, and they're like, What happened? No, no, no, go to the ER. And I remember saying, Well, I drove here, and they're like, You what? Get yourself in the ER. So they did all I had like an EKG, they did all this blood work. Uh, I had lung x-rays. I mean, I was there for a while, and they were like, This is serious. I mean, you could have died. Had you, and nobody would like how I was parked, no one would have seen me for a while. So afterwards, you really start being like, if I hadn't got her windows down, or had I got had I gotten stuck and couldn't get the seatbelt off because it's not my car, like I that could have killed me. Easily could have killed me. So, so if you're handling dry ice and you've done it for years, make sure those windows are down. Right. And next year buy an advent calendar, so it's all worth it for me.

SPEAKER_02 33:51

And then, right. Uh support uh Wes's family while he's in critical care.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

I did get that bill like two months later, and I was like, Whew! I guess that was a lot of tests. Wanna run this through workers' count? Like, nah, I'll just pay it. It's me.

SPEAKER_02 34:08

Mate, crazy. Well, I mean, there's a there's a tale to end on. Uh Wes, we'll put all our stuff in the links. Thanks for the chit chat. As I said, wide ranging, very informational, very enjoyable.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

I always love the podcast, so it's nice to be on again. So I appreciate the offer.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

No worries, mate. Take it easy. All right, see you, see.