Here's what it's like to run a $2.8 million/year ice cream company

I would say that the number one thing that is so difficult about being in the ice cream business is the fact that everything needs to stay frozen at all times. You have to find frozen transport, you have to have freezers wherever you go. You can't ship anything other than overnight and with dry ice. These are all added expenses. The ice cream world is very hard. Very hard. My name is Pooja Bavishi. I am 42 years old and the founder and CEO of Malai, and in one year, my ice cream business brought in about $2.8 million. Our scoop pricing starts at around $7. It varies in scoop shops in different locations. Certainly tariffs, inflation, rising costs for transportation, storage fees, everything has gone up. And so we have to take that into account when we're pricing our products as well. We use very high-quality ingredients in our ice cream, sustainably-sourced dairy, sustainably-sourced spices. We have to constantly explain why we have higher prices. It's no longer how it used to be. It's historically a lesser-priced product, and it really recalibrated when our brand role models like Jeni's and Van Leeuwen came out and they really turned ice cream on its head. They introduced really good quality ingredients. They made really good-quality products, and they let smaller players like us come in and actually compete.