Meet the Chef

A to Z Creamery: How Zach Built the Most Viral Ice Cream Brand in America Without Your Classic Scoop Shop

Rishi Talati

Zach from A to Z Creamery

Rishi from Hotplate

How are you doing, man?

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Zach from A to Z Creamery

Good. How about yourself?

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Rishi from Hotplate

I'm doing fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. Yeah, I just wanted to show the folks who Zach from A to Z Creamery is. Why don't we start by just telling us a little bit more about who you are and what you're working on?

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Zach from A to Z Creamery

I run an ice cream business. Basically, I started from making a pint or two on my own in my house from a little tiny Cuisinart. That was just a side hobby I had for quite a while. It was something I took up over COVID back when I had a sales job. So I started playing around with the ice cream machine that my mom had got me for my birthday. Started making pints for fun and posting it on Instagram. I had a little bit of a following from being a college football player. I was a little bit of a foodie for fun. So all the people around started being interested in the ice cream that I was making, asking if theyI could buy it. But when the demand got higher and higher and higher, I started trying to make more. Things grew. My business started up, got a license, got into a small commercial kitchen, and now it's a full-time job and things are doing very well.

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Rishi from Hotplate

Your drops are crushing, man. I'm curious, what was the process like to get started?

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Zach from A to Z Creamery

Once the demand got very high, and I had 100 people hitting me up asking if they could buy it, I knew that I had to get everything legalized and get into an actual commercial space. Then after that, it was starting a real business, getting an LLC, getting a permit that I could actually make ice cream. Of course, I can't use my little Cuisinart, so I had to get an ice cream machine. I ramped up production maybe to 50 pints right when I moved into the kitchen, but still doing part-time. And then when I moved to full-time, I think I was at 200 or 300. And then when I moved out of that spot into my spot I am now, I was at about 4-,500, now tinkering around 1,000 or so a week.

Rishi from Hotplate

When did you know this was starting to work?

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Zach from A to Z Creamery

I mean, pretty early on. My main focus is the creativity that I put behind each and every flavor. It's not something that you can find at a grocery store or even a lot of scoop shops. There's some good scoop shops out there that have unique and creative flavors, but a lot of them just flavor their base, and they don't really do mix-ins. What we do is layer our ice cream and mix-ins in each little pint, so you know that every single pint is going to have a ton of mix-ins in it. Some of the flavors we've done are Flaming Hot Cheeto, we've done Goat Cheese, Blueberry Grape. This week for Thanksgiving, we're doing mashed potato, cranberry, and rosemary cornbread. We don't do those every week, but those are some of the flavors that keep us unique and creative and make people stick around. Most of the time, we're doing variations of cheesecake, chocolate, caramel, but putting a twist on it. We're adding three to four levels of flavors together that all blend cohesively.

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Rishi from Hotplate

That's so interesting. You mentioned the creativity side of it. Whenever I look at your pints, they're super creative. What do you feel is the most important thing that's worked so well for you?

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Zach from A to Z Creamery

I think social media and Instagram. I mean, thank you, Mark Zuckerberg and everyone for starting the social media craze way back in the day, because 90% of my business is purely on social media. I have email campaigns for some of the older generation that doesn't have Instagram. The email campaigns help notify people when it’s time to go on the website to order. But social media is really what helped the business skyrocket. We have high demand and low quantity, which some people think we do on purpose. It's a small team of me and one other girl. We make as much as we can in a week, and we sell it at the end of the week. It's not like we have all this machinery, and we're just trying to force this scarcity. It's just literally what we can do. I think that with the high demand, low supply, along with having a very active and very engaging Instagram account, together, I think, is what made us really successful. It’s human nature to want something and desire something you can't have.

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Rishi from Hotplate

Can you dive in a little more about your approach to social media?

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Zach from A to Z Creamery

There are people whose jobs are purely social media, trying to read the algorithm, figuring out how to get engagement.I feel like half of my job is that, and half of it is making the actual ice cream. I have a guy that does content creation. He takes the pictures and he does the filming. We really want to make sure engagement is high. We want to take advantage of reels, which have become really popular in the last year or so. Every week when we come up with a new flavor, we do a reel that teases what the flavor is. For example, we did a flavor of Boston cream pie. It was Adam and myself who were talking to each other with a Boston accent. Our skit was Adam portraying my mom. I was portraying just a kid. I was getting ready for school, and she was packing lunch for me, or he was packing lunch for me.

I was saying all these things I wanted, like Boston cream pie. And we just made it into this fun little skit, so it engages people. They think, ‘Oh, what could the flavor be? Oh, is it a Boston-related food?’ It entices you to watch. And then we'll say, all right, the flavor is going to be announced tomorrow. People will be engaged and follow along for what the flavor will be the next day.

Rishi from Hotplate

You have thousands of followers now. When you were starting out as an unknown brand, what was it like getting your name out there?

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Zach from A to Z Creamery

Right from the beginning, I was making ice cream probably every other day just in my house. I would show the process of how everything's being made because, at least for myself, I love seeing how food is prepared, not just the final thing you're buying. I think along with the human nature part about wanting things you can’t have, humans also love seeing the behind the scenes of literally anything. I would show a bag or a video of the Flaming Hot Cheetos, me crushing it up into a bag, me pouring it into the ice cream, me mixing it up. It also shows people it's truly homemade, and that was my way of marketing it. Like, this is homemade.

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Till now, I still show behind the scenes. Our routine now is the teaser, then we announce the flavor, and then we show how it's made. It's a three-step process, all leading to each other.

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Rishi from Hotplate

That makes sense. That's actually a great segwayue into another question I have, which is –– how has it been scaling your business?

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Zach from A to Z Creamery

When I went into the first commercial kitchen, it was at 50 pints. When I left there, it was at 200 or 300. Then the new place, it's been around 1,000 or 1,200. There are some weeks where we've done 50 or 60, but just in terms of sheer space and how much we can hold, our kitchen can't really hold that much. I think the most we've ever held at a time is 2,000, but that's us putting pints and nooks and crannies, putting them on their side, stashing them in areas they shouldn't be. The next step, if we did, would be to open up our actual own space where I'd probably get a walk-in freezer with enough quantity to maybe double or triple. But where I'm at now, is good the way it is.I'm very happy and content with where we are.

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Rishi from Hotplate

Why the preorder model?

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Zach from A to Z Creamery

In terms of what A to Z is, it's pre-orders, it's online., You pick it up at the kitchen, you go home, you enjoy it on your couch. That's also another thing I like about just doing pints only, whereas if you go to a scoop shop, you get in a bowl with no lid, you're forced to eat it then and there. But I like how when you pick up a pint, you take it home, you can enjoy it whenever you want to.

Rishi from Hotplate

So why Hotplate?

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Zach from A to Z Creamery

When you guys first approach me, I love the simplicity of everything. With some of the other websites that I went through, there were just so many options. There's tabs on the left side of the screen. There's tabs on the front of the screen. There's 12 different things you can choose from here. I'm like, I don't even know where to start. I had to send out emails immediately when a flavor went live. But sometimes emails took 10, 15, 20 minutes to send. And then by then, the ice cream is sold out. But at least with Hotplate, you click buy, and you're done. There's not much else to it, which some people love, including myself. I feel like for what we're doing, it's a weekly drop. It's one flavor. I don't really need much customization. So in terms of the simplicity, that was huge. The text messages are awesome. The text messages and the simplicity of the site were two things that I really liked.

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Rishi from Hotplate

What was the biggest positive surprise about switching over to Hotplate?

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Zach from A to Z Creamery

Probably the customer service. If I text you guys, call you guys, someone's going to answer the phone. I know when I am voicing my concerns someone’s going to take care of it. Whereas these other websites, they're working with hundreds of thousands of customers. It's like, what is going on here? I would say the customer service has been the biggest surprise, but also one of the best surprises.

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