Barts Ice Cream Co.

Location: Greenfield, MA

Industry: Food and Beverage

Size: 25+ People

While sitting at a high-top table in a Boston WeWork, the man across from me said, “I still don't feel like we know who we are.”

Meet Tom, the new owner of Barts Ice Cream Company, a local business with a long history of making exceptional ice cream. Tom purchased Barts from its original owners because he believed it could and should reach more people.

He pursued a rebrand to position the company for growth, and found that while the visual identity of the company improved, the lack of shared language and understanding remained. “We’re struggling to make decisions and share the story of this awesome company,” he shared.

I suggested we work together to co-create a shared strategic practice that would allow him to scale the company because everyone would be on the same page.

the status and challenges

As the new leader and CEO, Tom was determined to build a company that delighted customers as well as a company that his team loved to work for. 

The company had just invested in a rather lengthy branding process. Thus, the team arrived fatigued after having just spent several months working on a big project up and above their regular efforts.

The company also brought with it a long history. We needed to help them find the evergreen value so they didn’t lose long-time customers and identify opportunities with the next generation of customers.

the work

We root our process in input from the stakeholders that make the organization possible. In this case, we surveyed their team and customers before conducting a sit-down interview the CEO to understand his vision.

We discovered that the team’s focus had become polarized on their product, not the company as a whole. We helped them take logical steps back from the product to get something viable and scalable. 

The key concept centered on nostalgia and doing things in a handcrafted way because it produced better results. They haven’t changed how they make their ice cream since they were founded 75 years ago. They also believe in real ice cream, which to them means that one pint weighs one pound because it’s that creamy and dense. 

Through facilitated sessions exploring the questions that came our of our listening report, we narrowed in on the word ‘uncomplicate.’ It captured the value their customers expressed — that feeling of days gone by, of summer as a child, and of simple joys — without dating the company in a negative way. We combined it with the word ‘joy’ because it was the one emotion that emerged repeatedly across stakeholder groups.

Once we locked in their strategy, we taught the team how to use their strategic lens to make decisions more easily and with more intent. They left the process energized.

“It’s so amazing to see how much goes into so few words, but this is exactly what we’ve been struggling to say. This is us,” shared Tom.