Most people like ice cream.

For Kelly Williamson and ^{Shelly Marshall}, it’^s more of a love _story — a love for the frozen treat and the nostalgia that comes from scooping up your favorite flavors. They love ice cream so much that they met at a Penn State ice cream course in the middle of winter. They became instant friends.

“It's three degrees, negative windchill factor, and we’re taking an intensive course about ice cream,” Kelly laughs. That’s how their entrepreneurial meet-cute began.

Both friends went on to run their own ice cream businesses. Shelly, who grew up in Trinidad and Tobago, opened a shop in Brooklyn called Island Pops, inspired by Caribbean native fruits and flavors. Kelly took another route, catering corporate parties and weddings with her signature ice cream sundae bars around Boston.

Then 2020 hit. As events and retail shut down, Kelly closed shop for good, and eventually connected with Shelly again. “Shelly had this idea for a powdered ice cream mix, just like cake mix or brownie mix,” she recalls.

Making ice cream from scratch, they both knew, could be time-consuming, required a long list of ingredients, and took major skills. “It's definitely an advanced type of recipe to make,” says Kelly.

Recipe-testing a shortcut version while she was out of work “created a new itch” for Kelly.

“I was able to bring a certain set of skills and perspective to this business idea.” From their respective cities, they set out on a journey, together this time, to create an ice cream kit that family and friends could make together at home. They launched a successful crowd-funding campaign, applied for grants and accelerators along the way, and bootstrapped as much as they could.