Cold Stone Creamery: Love of ice cream leads to business venture

Nicole Howe and her mom, Renee, have slightly different recollections of a phone conversation they had about seven years ago, shortly after Nicole had enrolled at Portland State University.

Nicole’s freshman residence was “right next door” to a Cold Stone Creamery ice cream shop, the first one she had seen. She spent plenty of time there, ate plenty of their ice cream and called her parents at their Kalispell home urging them to open their own Cold Stone Creamery business.

“My mom says I told her then I was going to own a Cold Stone Creamery,” Nicole said. But Nicole’s memory is of her urging mom and dad to undertake the business adventure.

Memories aside, Nicole’s fondness for Cold Stone’s cuisine and her appreciation for the business side of the franchise didn’t waver as she studied architecture at Portland State for a couple of years.

She had a change of heart about her education and profession, moved back to Montana, enrolled at the University of Montana as a business management major and found a Cold Stone store in Missoula to patronize.

She and that store owner struck up a friendship and talked about opportunities for Nicole with Cold Stone. She graduated with a business management degree and the knowledge she wanted to someday own a business in the Flathead.

She still was talking to her parents about them owning a Cold Stone, not yet focusing on her own business plans.

A year ago, the opportunity came about for her to obtain the Cold Stone franchise for the Kalispell region and she jumped on it.

Those franchise rights were held by the man who owned the Missoula store. He knew Nicole was interested in the business opportunity and when he asked, “I said yes,” Nicole recalled.

She went to a bank to start the conversation about a business loan. She obtained a Small Business Administration loan in part because Cold Stone Creamery is on the SBA’s list of approved businesses. That listing allowed for the loan process to be “a little bit faster,” Howe said.

She also began hunting for a location for her shop, knowing she wanted to be in Hutton Ranch Plaza. The owners of a gelato shop were looking to get out of their lease in the plaza and Howe was able to buy out that lease and move forward in that space. “I couldn’t have gotten a better location,” she said.

To comply with Cold Stone requirements, the space had to be nearly completely renovated. “All Cold Stones have the same look,” Howe said.

She and her mom completed the franchise training requirements, including working at a Cold Stone in American Fork, Utah, for two weeks and spending a week at the company’s headquarters in Scottsdale, Ariz., learning all the ins and outs.

The main product offered at Cold Stone Creamery is ice cream, which is made fresh daily. Customers choose a flavor and, if they want, they choose from a selection of fruit, nuts or candy, which is then mixed into the ice cream on an ice-cold frozen stone.

Shakes, ice cream cupcakes, malts, sundaes, iced coffee drinks, banana splits, ice cream cakes, smoothies, ice cream cookie sandwiches and ice cream pies are also on the menu. People can special order cakes or pies, but the most popular flavors are always stocked in the freezers for quick pick up. Pints of popular ice cream flavors are also in the freezer or customers can buy pints of any flavor to take home.

Every day, Howe and employees make waffle cones and waffle bowls. “It smells really good when we are making those,” she said.

For Cold Stone newbies, free samples of the various ice cream flavors are available. Once a quarter a sampling night is held for customers.

All Cold Stone products are guaranteed, Howe said. If a customer doesn’t like what they bought, they get a replacement product.

The store employs 19 people, all part-time workers. Many are teens who can work only a couple of days a week. Howe, a Flathead High School graduate, tries hard to accommodate her employees’ schedules, working around sports team practices and other extracurricular events.

Howe had planned to open the store in June, but a variety of setbacks pushed the opening date back to Sept. 11. In spite of missing the prime summer months to sell ice cream, “business has been great,” Howe said. “The valley has been excellent to us.”

The shop’s address is 110 Hutton Ranch Road, suite 104. Winter hours are noon to 10 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and from noon to 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Howe plans longer summer hours. She’ll also add outside seating in the summer.

Reporter Shelley Ridenour may be reached at 758-4439 or by e-mail at sridenour@dailyinterlake.com.