Ice cream chain Cold Stone gets warm welcome here
| • | Sweet success first on Maui |
By Andrew Gomes
Advertiser Staff Writer
There was Starbucks. Then Jamba Juice. Now Cold Stone Creamery has become the latest trendy Mainland retail food shop blowing into Hawai'i like the trade winds.
Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser
The Arizona-based chain of ice cream parlors, known for mashing sweet condiments into fresh-made ice cream on a frozen granite slab, opened three Hawai'i locations in the past 18 months and plans to cut the ribbon on four more franchised stores by the end of the year.
Cold Stone customers can choose from cookies, candies and other sweets to mix into their fresh-made ice cream.
The owners of nine more Hawai'i Cold Stone franchises are in the process of securing leases with landowners, according to Karen Kozen-Ryder, area developer for Cold Stone in Hawai'i and owner of the Kihei store on Maui. She has identified a total of 25 to 28 locations that she expects would complete a Hawai'i rollout.
"We have a line every night — people out the door and down the street," said Valerie Lamoureux, owner of the Cold Stone store in Waikiki. "It's a clever concept. It's a comfort food that everybody likes to eat."
Cold Stone's rapid expansion will undoubtedly slice into the market share of existing ice cream shop operators around the state who say competition is already tough.
"We're so small an island to support so many ice cream parlors," said Dave Leong, owner of Dave's Hawaiian Ice Cream Parlors, a 20-year-old Pearl City-based company with 11 retail stores on O'ahu and Moloka'i. "The pieces just get smaller, and that's just how it is."
Tony Waiau, franchise owner of the two Hawai'i Dippin' Dots shops that sell servings of frozen BB-size ice cream pearls at Ala Moana and Pearlridge Center, said Cold Stone's mix-in concept is just another option for consumers who typically buy ice cream by the scoop on impulse.
"It's just a matter of trying to attract customers through the novelty of your product and best-tasting ice cream," he said. "There's a lot of competition: You got Bubbies, Tropilicious, Häagen-Dazs, Baskin-Robbins and then you also got Yami Yogurt, TCBY ... "
Cold Stone's aggressive growth plan for Hawai'i mirrors the chain's explosion on the Mainland, where the company started franchising in 1995 and has since opened 250 stores in 28 states, with another 560 franchise licenses already awarded in anticipation of having 1,000 stores by the end of 2004.
Mashing cookies, candies, fruits and nuts into ice cream on a frozen rock slab started at a Boston shop in the early 1980s. But the concept really took off only in the past several years as a few chains like Cold Stone took to franchising, according to Lynda Utterback, publisher of the National Dipper, a trade magazine for frozen dessert retail store operators.
For instance, Columbia, Md.-based MaggieMoo's International has 68 stores and more than 130 under development. Houston-based Marble Slab Creamery has 150 stores and 65 more planned.
At Cold Stone, the interest in operating a franchise is intense, with only 2 percent of applications accepted, according to company spokeswoman Lisa Levi.
In Hawai'i, the popularity of owning a Cold Stone store has been nearly as high. Kozen-Ryder said she has probably received 150 applications for the 13 Hawai'i franchise licenses granted, and that included a severe falloff in interest after Sept. 11.
"As the economy started getting better, people started returning and we just had an overwhelming response," she said.
Lamoureux opened the second Hawai'i Cold Stone last December on Kalakaua Avenue in Waikiki next to her other business, skin care boutique Waikiki Aloe.
Lamoureux's Waikiki Cold Stone ranked No. 14 in sales for the chain. It's done well enough that she plans to open another store at Ala Moana Center if she can agree on a space at the state's largest mall.
Jean Ewart owns the third Hawai'i Cold Stone, which opened last month at Ward Entertainment Center and has been selling 100 gallons of ice cream a day.
"We expected it to be busy, but not this busy," said Ewart, a first-time business owner who runs the store with her sister-in-law and 21 employees. She plans to open her second Cold Stone in Kapolei in February.
Kozen-Ryder said sales at the Ward store topped the Waikiki store, putting it into the top five or 10 highest-grossing Cold Stone shops.
Cold Stone plans to add stores this year in Hilo in October or November, a second in Waikiki in November or December, one in Waimea on the Big Island in December and one on Kaua'i in December.
Kozen-Ryder is also working on obtaining leases in Kona, Pearlridge, Kahala Mall, Pearl Highlands and other areas, as well as opening two more stores that she will own, possibly in Mililani and the Mo'ili'ili/Manoa area near the University of Hawai'i.
Wendell Brooks III, Cold Stone's Hawai'i leasing agent with Chaney, Brooks & Co., said he initially figured it would take three years for Cold Stone to open 25 stores here, but now anticipates doing that in half the time.
"It's been a ride," he said. "The interest has been phenomenal. It's incredible."
Similar rapid market invasions have been made in recent years by Starbucks, Jamba Juice, Dunkin' Donuts and Sushiman. Brooks said Krispy Kreme will probably be next. "These trendy, convenient, clean and crisp and fun offerings just attract everybody," he said.
