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I Story / Zhoe Zhang

TRICK OR The number of

women-owned

TREAT? businesses food

services has
grown to 85%.

Tricking yourself into a healthier very romance movie has a scene of a break-up.
diet with ice cream. E In every break-up scene, there will be a girl sit-
ting on the sofa alone, watching TV and eating a
pint of ice-cream to soothe her pain. This is
probably one of the most classic stereotypes we have for
women, and as well for ice cream.
Ice cream is easy to be linked to break-ups and
something girlish. However, when it comes to ice cream
business owners, will women immediately get into your
mind? Probably not.
The good news is that the situation is improving. As of
2018, the number of women-owned businesses food services
has grown 85%, according to the State of Women-Owned
Business Report by American Express. We see more wom-
en-owned ice cream brands, such as the famous ice cream
sandwich Coolhaus, not only created billions of revenues
but also generated more jobs while employment for all
businesses declined.
However, what makes female ice cream entrepreneurs
really unique and outstanding is that they run the business
more by love than passion. They don’t want their ice cream
to be only tasty. They want the ice cream better for you, for
families, and for communities. And a good example of such
is Jessica Weiss Levison, the owner of Peekaboo Ice Cream
which features organic veggie ice cream that taste identical
to peoples’ favorite scoops.
Levison always had a passion for ice cream. Before she
became full-time in the ice cream business, she worked as a
lawyer during the day and practiced ice cream making at
night. Jessica originally opened up her first ice cream shop
in 2008. Back then, she collaborated with chefs at local
hotels to make them unique sorbets with seasonal ingre-
dients readily. And at that time, she has started experi-
menting with different organic vegetables to create inno-
vative ice cream flavors.

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