Sweet success first on Maui
| • | Ice cream chain Cold Stone gets warm welcome here |
Advertiser Staff
Two years ago, San Diego resident Karen Kozen-Ryder was thinking about retiring on Maui. Today, she's developing one of Hawai'i's fastest-growing retail franchises — all because of a particular addiction to ice cream.
Tim Hurley • Special to The Advertiser
A former owner of a Burger King and two Tony Roma's restaurants in San Diego, Kozen-Ryder was through with work and contemplating life in retirement. Then a happenstance trip to a Cold Stone Creamery with her husband, an insurance company owner, changed her future.
Karen Kozen-Ryder moved to Maui last year and opened and ice cream shop instead of retiring.
"It was the best ice cream we had ever had," she recalled. Kozen-Ryder, who said she ate ice cream maybe once a month before her Cold Stone encounter, became addicted, going twice a week and then buying a bucket instead of a cone of the stuff made daily at the shop.
In January 2001, Kozen-Ryder moved to Maui, the family's annual vacation spot. In April that year she opened the first Cold Stone store in the state. She said she had planned just operating a store or two, but was offered the area development rights, which she accepted.
She expects her husband, Len Ryder, to join her in about a month, after their house sells in San Diego and he gives the insurance business to their son. "Every day," she said, "he tells me, 'I'm so jealous.' This business is so much more fun than the insurance business."
