Curt Jones, founder of Dippin' Dots, explains the catastrophic financial and legal fallout of the patent lawsuit against Mini Melts.
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.”
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
Jones: Dippin' Dots Swung From $3M Profit to Loss in 2007
“Was the fact that milk prices had gone up 34% that year. Gas prices started going up a lot between 2006 and 2007. And then our liquid nitrogen cost went up like 10%. And so all of a sudden, on, on almost the same sales, we had went from like a net of two or th…”
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…”