Dylan Lemay, CEO and owner of Catch'N Ice Cream, joins Cheddar News to talk about the broader creator digital economy and the art of balancing business and content creation with its first-of-its kind shop experience.

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Catch'N Ice Cream Rolls Out Interactive and Immersive Ice Cream Shop 

the greater economy is blending how we see our social feeds and what is possible in entrepreneurship and our next guest is adept in both worlds as one of the biggest food and beverage creators on Youtube and Tiktok while his specialties ice cream and he's rolled success as a content creator into a first of its kind, interactive and immersive ice cream shop joining me now is Dylan, um A Ceo and owner of catching ice cream Dylan, it's great to have you on the show. How has social media helped your business? It's been crazy. I mean, just two years ago I was just managing an ice cream shop in the middle of America and now I'm living in New york city owning catching ice cream. Okay, so where do people find catching ice cream? Like what's the special sauce? Yeah, we're 65 bleeker street in New York City and if you come in we can even throw you some ice cream. We try to catch it. Is that the hook, is that what it's called, catching ice cream? We're showing some instagram video here, explain this to me. Yeah. So when I started throwing some ice cream to people, I never imagined it would become the name of my ice cream shop, but it really takes you back to being a kid and playing that first game that you all play, just catch bringing two people together and then ice cream also brings people together. So it's a great combo. So is that the hook is that everyone has to catch their ice cream in order if they buy it. No, you don't have to. It's just something fun that we like to do just to bring people together. It's the best when you have a whole group of people cheering you on just to catch that ice cream. But if not, we'll catch up for you. No worries. Okay, so obviously this ice cream can't be melty, can't be any of those things, right? You can ensure that there's not gonna be ice cream flying all over the shop. Is that the deal? No, we actually innovated an ice cream. So all of our ice cream doesn't have to be scooped out. So we actually, in case all of our ice cream in the toppings. And so when you select your flavor, a cookie dough, it's wrapped in the cookie dough and we throw that over to you or throw it to each other and then we smash and mix all those toppings from the outside into the inside. So it's a fun process. How do you do that? How do economically make that work? Um It is a little bit of a stretch on us, but we really focused on that experience over making all of the dimes and nickels that we can, but it's a ton of fun. We actually show you here, we're injecting our ice cream ball molds, we freeze those negative 40 and we wrap them all in the topics. Okay, so I do want to ask about your story. I mean, this is like, obviously I get it. It's, it's so visual, it's such a great story. So how did you go from doing this on social media and middle America? It's now being so successful. Like financially, how did you make this work to open up a shop now and one of the hottest neighborhoods in new york city? Yeah, obviously it's a huge risk, but it's been a ton of fun. We brought on a lead investor. His name is Chris Campbell, he's actually a content creator as well in the creator and the creator economy. And then we brought in a bunch of friends and family, other content creators and really raised 100 or 1.5 million to open the shop and we raised the second round to really create this behind the counter experience and bring kids in, bringing my audience, bring corporate events, whatever you'd like to come to the back, make ice cream with us and really get the full experience. I love this. I think we're seeing someone dip ice cream and fruity pebbles right now, like what are the most popular concoctions that people can catch at? Catch an ice cream of course cookie dough is the favorite. But as you're seeing now, you can actually come back and make your own flavor. So there's tons of fun but fruity pebbles, definitely very popular cooking is really popular, all of the major flavors. We try to do them. We also try to do stuff that's new and fun as well. So you do birthday parties. Is that what I was seeing on the screen there? Yes, yes. So you can bring in a group of kids and they can come into the back or a group of adults and will actually let you dip your hands in, make your own ice cream and then actually chop it up and eat it as well and then take one home with you. It's a fun process. Hands on. It's a great experience. Okay, this is amazing. What are the goals for the company? I mean, this is, this is, this is candy, right for anyone visual candy and certainly of course a real treat in real life as well. How do you grow the business? Yeah. One thing that's really nice about working with me as a content creator is that I have this large audience that we already have, so building our business. We didn't have to start and acquire customers, I brought them and so we're just taking the customers of mine that enjoy my ice cream videos that already want to buy something from me and just giving them a product and so we're trying to really use this opportunity to innovate, Bring something new to ice cream, ice cream balls, ice cream that's already scooped out no more scoopers for you. And so we're trying to just make it fun, test a ton of things out and really just reinvent ice cream for people. I'm so hungry, Dylan LeMay your open normal hours. I hope that's the case. I'm gonna have to stop by, right? Yeah. Let me know when you come by. I'll make sure you catch some ice cream. I think I can handle it. I'm excited for that Dylan Ceo and owner of catching ice cream. So good to have Dylan on the show.