David Erickson: This one is
personally sad for me. This is
from a Star Tribune article by
Rick Nelson. Izzy's Ice Cream is
an institution in the Twin
Cities; they're just a fantastic
ice cream shop and they've been
around forever.
Jeff Sommers and Lara Hammel are
the owners. They're spouses and
they started their first ice
cream shop in St. Paul on
Marshall Avenue that was closed
earlier this year due to COVID.
And then they had recently--so a
couple of years ago, opened up a
shop in Minneapolis and that too
now is closing because of
because of COVID. They are just
wonderful, the nicest people
you'll ever meet. They had built
a wonderful business. The St.
Paul shop was powered by solar
power, they had an array of
solar panels--
BL Ochman: That is so sad.
David Erickson: --on their roof.
Yeah. I talked about them in an
episode many, many years ago of
their RFID system for notifying
customers when their favorite
flavor was in the shop. It was
brilliant. We'll just refer to
that in the show notes so people
can see it, if they're
interested.
When we launched that, I did the
PR around it. And we had we had
a PR availability at the store.
I was telling the reporters
about my favorite flavor of
Izzy's ice cream is Hot Brown
Sugar. It's caramelized brown
sugar with cayenne peppers.
Fantastic.
And one of the reporters said,
"Yeah, mine too." And she was
Black. I completely missed the
joke but I got it, you know,
about a year later I was
thinking, oh my God. I don't
know whether she thought that I
was maintaining my composure as
a PR person or I just was
clueless and didn't get the
joke. It was it was the latter.
If she's ever listening to this,
it was the latter. But it was
funny.
BL Ochman: Oh, an ice cream
store. That would break my
heart.
David Erickson: Yeah, my
favorite story is, I came for a
visit with Jeff for some
meeting. And he was down in the
dumps and he told me why. He
had, I think, one of his
employees was caught stealing
from him. And obviously that's
disappointing. But his response
was, yeah, it's really a fail.
It's my failing is that I'm
supposed to teach these kids how
to be better. How to do right
and wrong and everything. He
took it personally. It was his
job to form good people of his
employees and so he felt like it
is his fault that it happened.
And I was like, oh my God,
that's such a good person.
BL Ochman: Oh that makes me sad.
David Erickson: They are still
in business. I should say that
the shops are closing to the
public; they're still selling
retail so that I can still get
their ice cream. Although I
don't know if I'm going to be
able to get Hot Brown Sugar
because it's probably not as
popular as I would like like it
to be but...
