Dippin' Dots founder Curt Jones discusses how surging commodity input costs during 2006–2007 quickly wiped out company profitability right before the 2008 financial crisis.
What-if
Jones: Having $100K in savings might have deterred starting Dippin' Dots
“I sometimes say if we'd had a 100,000 dollars in the bank, we might not have wanted to risk it, but I felt like if it didn't work, I was still young enough that I could probably still get a job somewhere.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Jones: Dippin' Dots and Opryland co-created the modern theme park kiosk format
“So this is when we kind of jointly came up with the kiosk concept, which you see in many theme parks today. It's a little standalone ice cream stand where someone stands behind it and sells it.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Curt Jones: Dippin' Dots spent over $10M and lost its core patent
“So we ended up having to come up with basically four million dollars At the end of this lawsuit, so we had spent six million, we ended up spending four on, on them. Wow. And I had to spend an additional 750,000 dollars to appeal this decision to get my name cl…”
What-if
Curt Jones: Would fight $10M patent lawsuit again rather than settle
“What would you do different if you know, if you look back now, and I suppose the correct answer is like, well, I would have settled, and then it wouldn't have cost me ten million dollars, but my answer is that I probably would do the same thing again, because …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Curt Jones: Dribbling cultures into liquid nitrogen creates distinct frozen pellets
“I found that you could pour the nitrogen into the cultures and freeze a big, big blob, or you could pour the cultures into the nitrogen and freeze a big blob, but I found that if you dribbled it in a little at a time, That you could actually form pellets.”
Assertion Supported
Curt Jones: Dippin' Dots began with lab pipette and liquid nitrogen
“So we grabbed about a, I think it was a little quart mason jar of the mix, and drove out to the lab, and I pulled out probably about a half a gallon of liquid nitrogen into a cylinder, and I took a pipette, and I took some of the ice cream mix, and I dropped i…”