March 20, 2017

Meet Gus Shamieh of CREAM in University Park

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Gus Shamieh.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Gus. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Inspired by my family’s favorite childhood treat, CREAM was created to share the family’s love of rich ice cream, sandwiched between two freshly baked cookies. We never had any plans to turn our nostalgic family treats into a business. However, in 2010, my father, mother, sister, and I decided to take the plunge and opened our first store in Berkeley, CA and were so excited to share these amazing creations with the local community.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
No new business is ever a smooth road, as you are constantly facing challenges and obstacles to your business. When opening Berkeley, we had a difficult time keeping up with demand. We did not expect positive word of mouth to spread so quickly, and we ended up consistently selling out of many products. We now look at that as a good problem, as it meant that we were doing something right.

Another struggle was going from small batch to large batch production in order to accommodate store openings and to ensure enough product was available to for all stores. Due to the fact that quality is one of our founding principles, the challenge was ensuring that the transition in production size did not sacrifice the quality of our product.

Please tell us about CREAM, which stands for ‘Cookies Rule Everything Around Me’.
CREAM specializes in developing handcrafted and warm ice cream sandwiches made using super-premium, proprietary flavored ice cream. Our Ice Cream Sandwiches have become widely regarded as a dessert staple to many, in addition to some of our other exciting ice cream creations. One such item is our infamous CREAM taco, which includes three ice cream flavors, any two toppings, wrapped inside a freshly baked waffle cone.

As a company, we truly pride ourselves on offering high-quality products made of superior ingredients and quality. We aim to provide nothing but fresh, rich flavors to all CREAM guests.

Additionally, I find that our passion for serving handcrafted and warm ice cream sandwiches, and the great amount thought that goes into all our creations is what sets us apart from our competition. We strive to make every ice cream sandwich taste as if it came straight from my mother’s oven.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Opening a new business is always challenging, especially in a diverse market. We are proud of the pace at which we have expanded our store locations and offerings. If we could change one thing, it would be that winter was a little less cold, so people could enjoy more ice cream.

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