California SBDC
Churn Urban Creamery
“My experience with SBDC has been nothing but positive. Their services gave me skills to plan for my business in a way that made me immensely more knowledgeable and far more confident to make the right decisions for years to come.”
Churning Up Success: SF Creamery Goes from Pop-Up to Permanent
BACKGROUND
Churn Urban Creamery is a San Francisco premium ice cream manufacturer that began in 2016 and sells homemade ice cream through a mobile pop-up storefront at local public and private events.
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
In August of 2017, the business was growing and the founder, Rica Sunga-Kwan, realized that her business idea was sustainable but needed a larger facility. She began working with the San Francisco Small Business Development Center (SBDC) to assist her with growth plans, including everything from human capital (employees) to financial capital (investment funds) to social capital (a network of supporters and educators).
SBDC SUPPORT
SBDC assisted Rica with preparing her business for growth by securing a permanent location, raising more than $350K in debt and equity capital, and preparing for hiring, training, motivating, and managing employees.
RESULTS AND FUTURE PLANS
On July 27th, 2019, Churn Urban Creamery opened its first brick-and-mortar location in San Francisco’s Portola District in the Old Avenue Theatre Building. This first location includes both a sit-down retail storefront and ice cream production facilities. With this permanent location, Churn Urban Creamery is positioned to better realize the founder’s vision of creating an eco-friendly ice creamery that manufactures unique ice cream flavors from scratch and will market and distribute them through both the retail storefront and catering.
