'It's not about the money any more. If it was, we wouldn't be in the ice cream business'

I FOLLOWED MY father into the ice cream business in the same way he followed his father into the trade. But it’s really a whole-family affair – even my sister, uncle and cousins are in it.

Back in 1986, I left school after my junior cert and ended up doing odd jobs in the winter months. But I would always drive the ice cream van for my father in the summer period.

I wasn’t going anywhere in the ice cream vans and wanted to better myself, so I went back to college and got a degree in business studies in the early 1990s from Portobello College.

It was a three-year, night-time course and I thought to myself, I’ll do it for a year and see how I get on. In the end I stuck it out, and it gave me confidence to hold my own when I was in meetings and chatting with bank managers.

I felt I needed to sort of make my own way because my dad’s ice cream business wasn’t a big multinational company, it was more of dying trade.

It was the beginning of when people and families started going to shopping centres at the weekend and not to the likes of Glendalough or other tourist spots.

Even before all the shopping centres popped up, if the weather was bad, people would stay at home. So I thought, we could give out about how things had changed, or we could up our game and go to where the customers are.

Launching Gino’s

I suppose Gino’s Gelato – our chain of ice cream stores – is a by-product of the original business my father started. But it’s not just me continuing my family’s legacy in the trade.

I have a business partner, Anthony Murphy, who has the same story as me. He’s from Limerick and his father was in the ice cream van business as well.

We actually used to compete against each other doing the same shows and festivals, but we made an agreement to not go against each other and stick to our own corners.

I thought it would never work, but that’s now over 20 years ago and we’ve never fallen out.

Together we saw the opportunity that ice cream wasn’t being done to a high level in the city centres and shopping centres in Ireland. So we started looking into the business in late 2007 and around a year later we had our first Gino’s open.

We made a lot of mistakes, but we got there in the end. We put a lot of effort, time and training in and between creating the brand, developing the logo and coming up with uniform concepts – it took time to nail the concept.

Since then we’ve learned a lot about the product because we used to call it ice cream, but it’s not – it’s gelato. It’s hard to explain the difference, but it’s all about how fresh it all is.

Every shop we have makes its own gelato, so we don’t have a freezer truck delivering the products. Instead we get organic milk delivered to the shops directly from the farmers – I think we bought about 250,000 litres of milk off them last year.

It’s a labour-intensive way to do it and a lot more expensive, but it helps make our products unique. We have the razzmatazz to get people in but need the products to get people back. There’s no point having all the singing and dancing if you’re not getting the repeat custom.

Jonathan Kirwan (left) and Anthony Murphy

Lessons

We couldn’t get any bank finance to start out with, so it was very difficult to get going.

In the end, we built it up using the cashflow of the business and lived off the money we were making from the ice cream vans. It meant we didn’t need Gino’s to make a living, so every penny could go back into the business.

We found it hard to even pay the bills when we started to be honest, but over time we conquered that and now we’re on top of it all.

Honestly, it took up until recently for that to happen, but even though it was tough, I think we’re a stronger company because we don’t have any bank debt.

I don’t think I could never do it again because there was a lot of stress and strain in building up Gino’s.

We still do business with the ice cream vans at the likes of Bloom, the National Ploughing Championships and Tullamore Show – however Gino’s has definitely become the bigger entity.

Even though Gino’s is easier, it’s hard to give up the van business because it is what helped us to start the stores and got us through the rough times.

I’d actually consider ditching the ice cream van business – I’m really still in it because I was always at it, but I don’t even enjoy it any more.

Gino’s is easier because you’re set up, the shops are open, they’re ready to trade every day of the year. Whereas when we do an event with a van, it’s like the circus.

You have to arrive in, set up, be there for a couple of days beforehand and afterwards, and work at the event.

Going abroad

The Georges Street store we opened last year is something we put in with a franchisee but I still did all the designing of the shop and the layout.

It was our first proper attempt at a sit-down store and we said, if we’re going to do it, we’ll throw everything at it to make it the best. I think we’ve achieved that.

The Georges Street shop is really paying off for the operator, and a testament of its success is that he’s going to open three more of them. We’re also looking at some more stores in Waterford and opening 70 in the UK over the next five years.

We’re not doing it for the money any more. Let’s be honest about it, if you had the money, I don’t know if you would get into the ice cream business.

It’s still a massive amount of work to run the business, but one thing we have worked on are systems and procedures. We have everything in place, so now I could roll out a shop from the office.

To get to a scale where you’re going to be opening 10 shops in quick succession, you can’t be going around doing it like we did.

Myself and Anthony are still hands-on with the fit-outs of shops, but that has to stop and we have to just pay more money and allow the other people to do it.

You find yourself a bit burned out after you get a shop open because you might do a few 48-hour shifts. But when you’re paying the rents like we are on Grafton Street, you can’t be closed.

If we say we’re going to open a shop next Thursday, you have to do it because you’ll just end up missing out on customers.

But we can’t do it like that in the UK, so we’re going to have to hire builders and project managers to look after it.

So even though I’d like to be able to take a step back, I’m not looking to hop into any other businesses at the moment – Gino’s has my full attention.

It’s working well and I think I could easily take my eye off the ball if I tried to do other stuff. I thought about it, but I figured it would be best to push what I have.

Jonathan Kirwan is the co-owner of Gino’s Gelato.This article was written in conversation with Killian Woods as part of a series on business mistakes and what can be learned from them.

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