Neil Hershman, CEO of frozen yogurt chain 16 Handles, joined Cheddar News to discuss the company's partnership with Oatly and what lies ahead.

Neil Hershman, CEO of frozen yogurt chain 16 Handles, joined Cheddar News to discuss the company's partnership with Oatly and what lies ahead. "Frozen dessert, especially the way we model ourselves, is a high margin because the product is self serve because there's not that much labor that has to go into it," he said.

16 Handles Partners With Oatly, Teases New Minty Holiday Flavor

well, my next guest started as an analyst down here on Wall Street before turning to food industry entrepreneurship, good for him. He quickly worked his way up as the largest franchisee of the frozen yogurt spot. 16 handles well known here in Manhattan before acquiring the brand in august and joining me now back to his roots on Wall Street here on the floor of the new york stock exchange is 16 handles. Ceo Neil, Harshman Neil, thanks so much for coming on this show. What an interesting story. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. So yeah, I started in finance and and got my credit training and I just wanted to do something a little bit more hands on and I also love dessert. I'm a big runner and so the end of a good run is always going to ice cream. I grew up in a family that would have ice cream before dinner. So It just all made sense and 16 handles happened to be my neighborhood spot when I was living in the East Village. So I knew the brand well met with the original founders and started off with one franchise, which was really supposed to be a turnkey investment. But I realized the frozen dessert industry is such a high margin kind of low effort, low labor business. And so there's just a huge opportunity for an active owner with some new ideas and a refreshed energy for the brand to come in and help expand it. And so that's kind of what my plan has been the last few years talk about the consumer aspect because anyone who's watching if they live on the east coast at least they know what 16 handles is 16 handles is all over new york city with storefronts. What's the geographic spread? Is it around the country to? Yeah, so it's really right now focused around the northeast corridor. However, the big play here is that we should be a national brand and it just was the fact that the previous owners, they were really focused on organic growth and now we've taken the model that they built. We've, we've perfected it and we're really focused on keeping our owners happy and we're actually owner operated brand. So in addition to myself, some other VPs are actually franchise owners themselves and really get that hands on experience at the stores so they really know what the customer wants and the best way to operate. And now that we, we have all that we can build that synergy into a platform that we can bring nationally and that's our plan. So I assume no major changes with you on board. Right. Kind of the special thing about 16 handles is you just load up those toppings over and over again. Absolutely. So it's still self serve, soft serve. The one thing that we really do well at 16 is it such a broad category, you don't just have to come in for frozen yogurt. We also have the sorbets, we have vegan products all the time. We right now have a partnership with Oatley, which is a super popular oat milk company and we were the exclusive kind of launch partner for Oatley and their, their soft serve and we have all these different flavors with a bunch more launching soon. The new flavors, I can't give you those secrets yet, but you can subscribe to our mailing list to find out. Okay, Neil, I'll be doing that and it's, there always are so many flavors. What 16 handles. Always, there's always, there's 16 different handles to pull from for flavors over 50 toppings, a bunch of sauces as well. So you can load it up and I mean you can go to 16 handles 50 times and never have the same thing. That is so true. And if you're a runner, I mean like you can burn the stuff off. That's, that's the plan. That is the plan. Um, talk to me more about the margins of this business because you're a young business owner. It's pretty amazing right? Obviously, you know how to follow finances, but you had mentioned at the start of the interview that it is a pretty profitable business. Yeah, frozen dessert. Um, especially kind of the way that we model ourselves. It's a high margin because um, You know, the product is self serve and so it's just, there's not that much labor that has to go into it. Um, and so there's a nice spread. And then in addition to that, there's just with scaling a brand, like, like the way 16 handles has there's a lot of benefits that we can get in our prices in our technology integrations that just make it a lucrative business and it's really fun. Has the only partnership been successful? Yeah, absolutely. I think in addition to satisfying the 16 handles customers we already have, who do want that non dairy product. This has brought in a whole new slew of customers through our doors. Who know Utley's brand? They see it on the busses around new york or in these various things and they want to actually try it and maybe they don't drink coffee or maybe they just coffee shops out of Oatley. And so they come to us and they try it and they're hooked. Okay. What's the best? What's the best recipe at 16 hands. So people are boring. People are boring and generally go for vanilla with like Oreos on top and rainbow sprinkles and hot fudge. I think there's a few sleepers in there. There's obviously the tart flavors which we have our original Euro tart flavor, which is really great uh, adding fruit on it. My personal favorite, I've always, I've always liked mint. So mint chocolate chip with extra chocolate chips, extra brownie and some Hershey's hot fudge on it. Oh my gosh, that sounds so delicious. Now. Have you noticed any changes in consumer patterns amid the pandemic? Yeah. So uh we really focused on online ordering, There was a few weeks where all of my stores, I have seven locations that I actually own and operate around Manhattan. Uh, there's several where we were fully closed during the beginning of coronavirus because it was like, you didn't know what you were supposed to do and certainly people weren't walking around going to shops and then we reopened delivery only for quite a while. And when doing that, we also focused our technology to make sure that we could provide this really seamless online ordering experience for our customers. So it's through third party like Grubhub Uber eats just like you'd normally have, but also Through first party so that they can order directly with us know that they're getting exactly what they're wanting and they can collect loyalty just like they would in store. So do you see pretty strong demand even through the colder winter months? Yeah, 16 handles. You know, obviously any kind of cold product is seasonal but we're less seasonal because it's just, there's such a broad category range and people are hooked on it. It's like you just wanna want to smile sometimes and eat some dessert and that's what 16 handles is all about. Oh my gosh Neil. So impressive! Thank you. Sure you can't give me a sneak peek as to what new flavors might be in store. I can't, if you, if you like peppermint and you know, it's obviously coming up on the christmas season and the holiday season. And so there's definitely some holiday season seasonal flavors and toppings coming up pumpkin spice. I assume that's offered pumpkin spice is uh, is always limited time always in that october kind of that september through november range so you can go get pumpkin spice but not for much longer. Okay. Doesn't start in june thankfully. That's all I needed to know. Neal Hirschmann Ceo 16 handles. Neil. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for having me.