Beginning
Progress doesn't always announce itself. Sometimes you just look up one day and realize things are different. Better. Tap ❤️ if this resonates and share with someone who's closer than they think.
Summer is here even though it’s spring. I only live in two seasons — summer and winter, the seasons when people want to eat ice cream and don’t want to leave their house to get it.
Last year at this time, the beginning of the season, Nick and I were in a transition. He was shedding the parts of his work that he enjoyed the least — managing our front of house team. Managing others is not fun for him. In the first week of May 2025, I began my journey setting new expectations for our scooping team and creating a new culture for how we work together. I call it our “culture of care.”
Image: Taken at our (first ever) Season Kick Off Meeting last week. We met to reconnect as a group about service, scoop sizes, and how best to work together as a team.
As I was making the schedule for the week ahead — yes, I’m still doing that but feel more confident than ever to soon share that task with someone else on our team — I started thinking about what has changed in the last year. My consistency with these emails has offered me a bit of a time capsule. I was able to read my reflections from May 5, 2025 and May 19, 2025 and let me just say, I’ve come a long way! Managing people is pretty easy for me but managing them in a restaurant setting was new. Building store schedules and balancing labor hours with hourly sales projections and developing training materials with other standard store operating procedures was all new. After attending the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Businesses program, I realized the parts of our staff organizational chart that were missing — recognized (in title and pay) shift leadership and opportunities for growth in the company. We definitely still need someone to lead the operations of this business so that I can do CEO-focused tasks like figuring out how to scale on our terms and build or find a larger production facility, but I feel more comfortable now finding someone to fill the role of what I’ve been learning over the last year.
Image: Screenshot of the results from the double scooping challenge that we had at our staff meeting. We train our scoopers on three areas, portion sizes, speed, and aesthetics. There were scoopers who scooped on weight but weren’t as fast or their scoops weren’t as pretty. These three winners were the closest to all three and got one hour of PTO added to their banks as a prize.
On June 9, 2025, I said, “This time next year, I will have a new organizational structure in place for Sugar Hill Creamery that will have a resounding positive impact on my life and my team’s.” I have a month and a few days to really bring this home but I’m really proud of what I’ve achieved thus far. From my scoopers to my husband, I have received the feedback that our team feels more unified and our team culture has improved. Last year at this time, there were call outs and people who didn’t match our company values representing us on the front line. Now, everyone on our team cares and takes their work seriously. Our current front of house retention is 14.3 months, roughly 2-3x the industry norm, illustrating that our company is a pretty good place to work.
Last year, a note like the one I wrote to the team would have barely been acknowledged. Tonight, I wrote, “This will be a busy week. Catering is picking up, Tuesday will be 81 degrees, Mother’s Day is on Sunday, and StuyTown is back in the mix! Balancing the training of new team members, intern schedules, and everyone’s availability was a doozy, but we got it! You’ll notice some days we will open early and close late. You’ll also notice @Amanda V is back on the schedule (Welcome back, Amanda!). Many of you are working more hours, which hopefully is good news for you. We will update to consistent summer hours everywhere very soon. PLEASE TAKE NOTE OF YOUR SHIFT START/END TIMES & LOCATIONS. This is the beginning! Here’s to a great season ahead! Hit the 👍 if you read this.”
Image: Some of team scooping their double scoops as part of the challenge.
This is the beginning…beginning of ice cream, beginning of phase two of my staff development plan, and the beginning of our countdown to our 10th year anniversary next year. Stay tuned for so many delicious moments this summer, a period of time that spans from late April to mid September in my world.
With a cone in my hand,
Petrushka
Your Local Ice Cream Lady & Life/Business Coach
P.S. Don't forget to RSVP to our Annual SHMOM Reunion taking place this Saturday, May 9th at 10am in Morningside Park.