Glace Owner, Sasha Zabar, sat down with Forbes Reporter Rosemarie Miller to discuss how he's navigated the sudden viral rise of his stores hot chocolate and marshmallows.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 Our goal is to turn gloss into kind of the next great dessert concept.
00:04 And we don't want to be kind of pigeonholed by being an ice cream shop or by being a hot chocolate shop.
00:10 And even though this is probably the smart thing would be to kind of boil it down into its like core product.
00:16 And I like the creative aspect of it.
00:18 Hi, everyone, and welcome to New Money, where we talk to movers and shakers about how they made it.
00:26 I'm your host, Rosemary Miller, here with Sasha Zabar, the CEO and founder of Gloss.
00:33 Thank you so much for joining me today, Sasha.
00:35 Thank you for having me.
00:36 Yes, and this is New Money, and we talk to movers and shakers about how they made it.
00:40 That's what we're doing here.
00:41 And your ice cream shop, right?
00:44 Yeah, exactly.
00:45 Gloss. It blew up all over social media.
00:48 Tell me about that.
00:50 It's been kind of an unbelievable three months now.
00:56 But we opened Gloss on June 1st, and we built it for $25,000 in six weeks.
01:04 It was kind of a rush to get open for the summer.
01:07 And we had a very good summer.
01:10 I don't know if you remember the weather.
01:12 It wasn't great.
01:14 We were busiest on the weekends, and we had rain a bunch of weekends.
01:18 And I really thought, when September comes around -- also, we're located on 91st and Madison,
01:24 which is a very residential neighborhood, and there's four or five private schools in a one-block or two-block radius.
01:33 And there's the Guggenheim, the Jewish Museum, Cooper Hewitt.
01:36 So there's a lot of museums, as well.
01:38 And I really thought, when September comes around, and the schools are back in session,
01:43 and the weather gets better, that the business was just going to continue to take off.
01:48 And instead, we had basically seven weekends of rain in a row in September.
01:57 So I was kind of always thinking, "What are we going to do in the winter?"
02:03 I think you have to be in the ice cream business to really know what the seasonality looks like.
02:08 And because this was our first year, we just weren't sure.
02:11 Is our sales going to drop 20%, 50%, 80%?
02:18 And I remember the first really cold, rainy day in November, I looked on the POS app on my phone.
02:29 I was coming back from a work trip, and we did $350 in sales that day.
02:36 And I remember thinking, "Oh, God, this is going to be bad. What are we going to do?"
02:43 And I put together a hot drinks menu.
02:48 We did a couple of things.
02:49 We did hot waffles, and we did a bunch of different Sundays that I thought were more cold-weather-focused.
03:02 And we put together a hot drinks menu.
03:04 And one of the items on the hot drinks menu was our S'mores hot chocolate.
03:11 It didn't take off right away, but everyone who had it loved it.
03:19 And there was kind of this moment when we would hand it over to the customer, and they would look at it.
03:26 And you could see how excited they were to try it and how delicious it looked.
03:30 And I thought, "If we can just get enough people to try this, get it into enough people's hands,
03:35 I think we might just be able to do enough business to get through the winter."
03:40 Southwick: And how did you get it into the right people's hands?
03:42 Because it blew up all over TikTok, all over Instagram.
03:45 Hall: It did. And I wish I could say I was a marketing genius and pulled all the right levers
03:50 and knew the right people to call at the right time.
03:54 But what I think happened is, we had a lot of fans who loved the ice cream we were making over the summer
04:01 and appreciated the quality ingredients we were using.
04:04 We make everything in-house, from the caramel to the fudge to every cookie that goes in the ice cream.
04:10 We make the ice cream ourselves, our soft serve, which a lot of people loved.
04:15 And we cultured a frozen yogurt from scratch that had a lot of fans.
04:22 And so, I think we had a couple of influencers who had come in over the summer who admired
04:27 and appreciated what we did.
04:29 And so, I think when they heard that we were doing some new things for the winter,
04:33 they just came in on their own.
04:37 It wasn't even paid social. They paid for the drinks.
04:40 They didn't even ask me. I would have been thrilled to give away, "Come in, try that chocolate!"
04:47 But they came in on their own.
04:50 The first person I remember was an influencer named Carboholic, Rachel Brotman.
04:55 And just right before Thanksgiving, she must have come in.
05:00 And I didn't see her post, but I started to get a lot of activity on social media on my phone.
05:06 So, my phone would vibrate every minute.
05:10 And I was getting beeps and dings.
05:13 So, I knew something was happening and I could feel it.
05:16 And we started getting more followers.
05:18 And there was an uptick in people coming into the store.
05:23 And we went from selling 10 hot chocolates a day to 15 to 25 to 30.
05:29 It felt like the momentum was shifting.
05:32 And then, I don't remember the exact moment when it reached critical mass and it started to really run.
05:42 But one influencer came in named New York City Fruit Faves.
05:46 And she posted a video.
05:49 It was good, but it looked... I can't say the video was nicer or higher quality than the rest.
05:56 But it was just at the right time, at the right moment, done the right way.
06:02 And it blew up. And I think she has like 50 million views.
06:06 And that's what really started the madness.
06:09 And the lines out the door.
06:11 I saw in the comments that the lines would sometimes be 30 minutes, hours long.
06:16 How did y'all as a business keep up with that demand?
06:19 So, I mean, it was...
06:22 In the beginning, when I opened the ice cream shop, it was kind of a side project for me.
06:28 I was working for my family's business.
06:30 My grandfather started Zavar's on the West Side.
06:33 My father, Eli, split off and started his own business in the '70s.
06:36 And I was kind of managing both, working full-time for my dad and then also managing the ice cream shop on the side.
06:46 And so, when it started to pick up, I would kind of go in before work.
06:51 I'd prep all the ingredients. I'd make all the recipes.
06:53 I'd make the marshmallow. I'd make the hot chocolate. I'd make the whipped cream.
06:57 And then I would come in after work and I would do it again at night so they were ready for the next day.
07:04 I'd keep going or make it for the evening.
07:07 And then I started coming in before work, at lunch, and after work.
07:12 And then I started coming in, you know, "Oh, I have a business meeting." I'd run out and start helping.
07:17 And then right away, it was like, "I can't do both. I need to focus on gloss."
07:21 We're having a moment and we needed to really take advantage of it.
07:25 And the hardest thing was when you reach a certain point and the quantities get too big, you can no longer keep up with the equipment we had.
07:38 So, we didn't have a mixer big enough to make the marshmallow.
07:42 So, at one point, it was from 5 a.m. to 12 o'clock at night, nonstop, it was just me making marshmallow.
07:50 Or, you don't have pots big enough to cook large enough amounts of hot chocolate.
07:58 Or, you run out of milk and you go to two supermarkets and you buy six cases and you buy them out.
08:06 And so, I think one of the greatest things was that because I am in a food family business, there were resources that I could lean on.
08:19 Like, borrowing employees from other businesses when it got crazy.
08:24 Or, transitioning from making the marshmallow ourselves to making it at our commissary with large-scale industrial mixers.
08:33 Without that, it would have been very hard to hit the numbers that we ended up hitting and are hitting now.
08:40 Let's go back a little bit.
08:42 What made you even decide to open an ice cream shop?
08:46 I mean, there's tons of ice cream shops around, right?
08:49 Why did you decide to do this?
08:51 You already explained why you did it in that location, but did you really believe, like, "Okay, my business is going to be profitable. It's going to make it."
08:59 You know, there are a lot of ice cream shops, but there aren't a lot of good ice cream shops.
09:06 There are a bunch of chains in New York.
09:08 And New York's a very hard climate to be in the retail business. The rents are high, labor is expensive.
09:14 And I thought that if we really made something delicious, that people would come for it.
09:27 They did in the summer when it was warm, but it wasn't until we kind of figured out the hot chocolate that it really exploded.
09:37 I know you said there was a day where y'all only made, what, $350?
09:41 Was there ever a moment where you thought, "We're going to go out of business"?
09:45 Yeah, definitely. I think not out of business.
09:47 I think that I was going to start by shutting down for the winter, maybe closing for two months.
09:55 And I really didn't want to because I had two really good employees at the time.
10:00 And I didn't want them to have to look for work. I didn't want to have to go out and find new employees for the summer.
10:07 But I thought, "If we're only doing this much business and our labor is running at X, then it almost will be less expensive to just eat the rent for two months."
10:19 And it's very hard to make. When you're busy, you can have a team making ice cream.
10:27 But when it's really slow, it's hard. You can't make tiny batches.
10:32 So there's a lot of ingredient costs. There's a lot of labor that goes into it.
10:36 And you need a little bit of scale to make it work. So yeah, it was tough. It was scary.
10:45 So let's pivot a little bit to the overall business. What tips do you have for someone who is trying to start a business, their own brick-and-mortar restaurant, dessert shop?
10:55 Yeah. I mean, I have a couple of suggestions. I also have a couple of lessons that I wish I had done a little bit differently.
11:04 One thing is, I think it's really important when you're starting out to be scrappy and not spend more money than you have, not spend more money than you feel comfortable with.
11:13 Do as much of the work yourself as possible. But before you open, the more work you can get done before you open, the better off you'll be.
11:22 And that goes from anywhere from the branding to SOPs, standard operating procedures, employee handbooks.
11:30 Because the minute you open, those little details become less important or you become too busy.
11:36 And it becomes very hard to get ahead of it when you're in the middle of it.
11:41 So, being organized, being prepared, pushing yourself to get as much done before you open the doors.
11:50 And then, I think you have to keep pushing. We were very lucky in some ways, but we were only six months old when the business exploded.
12:04 But people always ask me what the hardest part was. It was really in the period before the video went viral when business was really terrible and we were trying new ideas.
12:18 It takes a lot of diligence and a lot of determination to come in and make a fresh batch every day.
12:24 The next day, even though it may not be bad, you need to basically have the fortitude to say, "Hey, this is not 100%.
12:36 I'm going to throw this out. I'm going to start over. I want every day, every product, every customer to have the best experience and not cut corners."
12:45 And just hang in long enough until the momentum changes.
12:50 Well, this is new money, so we do have to talk about money. How did you learn how to manage your money?
12:57 One of my best friends, Brian, who actually has been helping me a little bit with the business,
13:04 he comes from a very analytical perspective. He always wants to have all the numbers and be as organized as possible.
13:13 On a day-to-day basis, know how labor is changing, your overtime, and food costs. I do it a little differently.
13:23 I keep track of food costs, I keep track of labor, but it's more of an idea or a goal number in my head.
13:36 The truth is, when you're really busy and you're doing a lot of business, it's like volume cures oils.
13:44 As long as you're busy, you're in good shape. The hard part is when things slow down.
13:50 When we went from a good summer to a slow fall or fall/winter, that's when you have to really take a look at the numbers and say,
14:01 "Hey, are our margins okay? Is our labor okay?" With the tipping changes that have happened in the last couple of years,
14:12 and now every PR system asks the customer for $1, $2, or $3 tip, in many ways, it afforded me a little bit of wiggle room.
14:23 My employees were still making pretty good money off of tips, and it allowed me to keep my labor percentage
14:31 lower than I would have had to in the past. If they were making $25 an hour, only $15 or $16 of it was coming from labor,
14:41 and the rest was coming from tips, which allows you to attract a more talented group, a better team.
14:52 But managing money, I'm very lean on my spending. I take no money for myself from the business.
15:04 My goal is to basically, how long can we go before we have to spend $1? I'll push everything out as far as possible,
15:13 just because it makes me feel more comfortable having money in my bank account than owing it to somebody else or spending it.
15:24 So, you're putting all the money you're making from the business back into the business, basically.
15:27 Exactly. I tell everyone, this is our time to double down, to really go all in.
15:36 Don't spend on anything that you don't need to spend on. Don't take a salary if you can afford to.
15:43 Just put all the money back into the business.
15:46 What do you believe is the biggest and best purchase you've made for the business,
15:51 and an expensive but really bad purchase you've made?
15:56 Well, there's a couple things that I'm considering right now that could be great or could be bad.
16:05 For expensive? I bought an espresso machine in the fall when I was starting to think about hot drinks.
16:18 I didn't really buy it for the coffee aspect. I bought it for the steamer so we could do hot chocolates.
16:25 Basically, heat things up, do hot drinks to order. It wasn't that expensive, but the minute the hot chocolate took off,
16:39 I basically stopped doing coffees because it was too much of an obstacle in how we laid out our production.
16:51 I've been considering buying this machine that makes whipped cream, but on an industrial scale, on a larger scale.
17:04 It's like $7,000. It's relatively expensive for something that --
17:08 For whipped cream.
17:09 For whipped cream. I sell a lot of whipped cream to make that work, versus us making it every day.
17:16 We make it every morning, but we make it in a large mixer. But that was one thing.
17:24 The best purchase we made, we got a new mixer for the marshmallow when everything took off, and we just absolutely needed it.
17:34 The one that we had was not big enough. It didn't work all the time. Occasionally, you would put it on speed two,
17:43 and it would go on to speed three. We've been still pretty lean on expenses, so I think there's a lot of things
17:55 that I'm planning to buy now, or buy for our second location that we're working on.
18:03 We'll see if they're good decisions or bad decisions.
18:05 Well, you beat me to it. I was definitely going to ask if y'all had plans of expanding.
18:10 Where's the second location going to be?
18:12 We're still figuring it out. We have a couple opportunities right now that we're exploring.
18:19 But our goal is to turn Gloss into the next great dessert concept.
18:24 We don't want to be pigeonholed by being an ice cream shop or by being a hot chocolate shop.
18:32 Even though probably the smart thing would be to boil it down into its core product and franchise it or keep opening stores,
18:40 just become the Mrs. Fields of hot chocolate. But I like the creative aspect of it.
18:47 I like coming up with new ideas. I like trying new things out.
18:50 To me, the fun part is, this week we're going to do this flavor, and next week we're going to have a new idea.
19:04 I told you, we made an unbelievable, I would say the best frozen yogurt in the city.
19:10 Nobody makes it themselves anymore. We were culturing the yogurt. No stabilizers, no mixes.
19:21 I'm not a frozen yogurt guy, but I loved our frozen yogurt. I want to incorporate that.
19:29 We made some delicious pastries when we were experimenting for the winter.
19:34 We make delicious ice cream sandwiches, ice cream cakes, hot chocolates, frozen hot chocolates.
19:40 How are you preparing yourself mentally to manage all of these businesses?
19:49 It's tough. I've reached out to peers and people who I consider advisors who have done this successfully.
20:03 I'm trying to create a team that I can reach out to when I have a legal issue, an IP question, an expansion idea, or a CPG product idea.
20:16 Before we do it, we have the resources.
20:20 Thank you so much for joining me today, Sasha.
20:23 Thank you so much for having me.
20:25 [end]