The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 13 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Van Leeuwen: Unilever and Nestlé cannot launch scrappy startups
“This is why the Unilevers, the Nestle's cannot do what we did, you know, cannot Started even with all of the resources in the world. Like when you get big, your brain changes, you know, you're really good. You become good at running big organizations, but hard…”
Van Leeuwen: Brick-and-mortar beats food trucks in revenue and ease
“You do brick and mortar because they do a lot more revenue and they're a lot easier to operate.”
Van Leeuwen: Turned down offer to sell 15% for $250,000
“Before that, maybe a month or two before that, we had turned down an offer to sell 15% of the business for 250,000 dollars.”
Van Leeuwen: Standard Italian grocery stores match the fanciest American stores
“They don't really have fancy grocery stores there. Yet every grocery store is almost as fancy as the fanciest store in America.”
Van Leeuwen: There are no 'foodies' in Italy, just Italians
“Cause I always say there's no foodies in Italy. It's just Italians.”
Ben Van Leeuwen: Simple-ingredient ice cream naturally preserves without artificial additives
“You put it in the freezer, and it stays good for months or years. So we're like, whoa, you can make the best ice cream ever, and it's completely preservable. You don't need to add any weird stuff.”
Van Leeuwen launched with $60,000 and two used eBay post office trucks
“So we tried to raise two 50, we only raised 60 and that was enough not to buy a new truck, because just the new truck before you turned it into an ice cream truck would have been 70,000. So we bought a used post office truck. Actually, we bought two. We starte…”
Van Leeuwen expects 105 shops, 15,000 wholesale doors, and 2,000 employees
“So in 20, 25, we started with 70 corporate owned scoop shops. We'll open 35 this year. So we'll actually grow 50% on our scoop shop footprint this year. Wholesale is in 15,000 doors with over 50 SKUs. We, I think by July we'll hit about 2000 total team members…”
Van Leeuwen: First Brooklyn shop matched daily truck revenue in three hours
“And that store in three hours had already done the revenue that, you know, our best truck location would do an entire day.”
Van Leeuwen: Brick-and-mortar retail subsidized wholesale operations for years
“If we didn't have the brick and mortar, I don't know where we'd be because that has subsidized the wholesale business many, many years.”
Van Leeuwen: Kraft Mac & Cheese ice cream generated 12B media impressions
“You know, it got, I think, twelve billion media impressions, whatever that means.”