Today we’d like to introduce you to Julia Yacenda-Murphy, Angie Martinez and Bernie Dickson.
Julia, Angie and Bernie, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
We are three best friends with over 20 years of friendship, Angie married Bernie’s cousin, and Julia married Angie’s cousin, so now this is a family business! We each have very special talents that we bring to the company.
The company was Angie’s brainchild and she has been the fearless leader. She has the most original and magical eye for design and has created our wonderful brand and artwork that makes our product so appealing and irresistible to customers. She came up with the idea of Mom and Pop Shop while taking her (then) two children on a jog and stopped to get them a treat from a creepy ice cream truck and thought “here I am running to improve my health but I am getting my children, fatty, sugar-filled trashy food, there has to be something better??” Health was also at the forefront of her mind with her second child having a rare genetic condition, heterotaxy, she had to monitor his diet and exposure to anything potentially harmful to his immunities. She had the vision to combine her fun-loving sense of style, desire for something sweet (seriously she has the BIGGEST sweet tooth ever!) and need for a wholesome treat option in the market into…Mom and Pop Shop!
Angie first brought on her art college roomie, Bernie. Bernie is the cheerleader. You will never meet anyone more positive and uplifting! Bernie too brings a great deal of design to the company as a social media marketer and amazing photographer.
Lastly, Angie’s high school BFF, Julia was brought on to make the pops. With a background in academia and a career in social justice and chronic disease prevention research at UCLA, she decided to pursue her lifelong passion in food and became the popsicle recipe chef. Her years in Berkeley, CA and experience working for an organic spice company many years ago introduced her to the natural food revolution and the world of specialty health food product consumption and demand. She is the creative mad scientist who troubleshoots through flavors to craftily marry healthy ingredients and yummy nummy goodness! Her two children are her happy taste testers!
Our journey started with a simple idea to make healthier treats for our children while retaining the nostalgia of the vintage ice cream truck experience. We bought a rickety mail truck from craigslist and made pops out of our kitchens and sold them out of coolers with dry ice, not knowing the first thing about the food industry, and slowly evolved to having three carts, working from an amazing shard kitchen and opening a summer pop up shop, to now our next stage of having a co-packer and our own storefront. We have made many mistakes but we have learned a lot and ultimately have grown our business.
We often get asked if it is hard having a business with three owners and being friends, and it has been the best thing ever! Through the years, we have taken turns getting pregnant, buying our first houses, starting our kids in schools and when one of us has to take a time out to do, well, life stuff the other two swoop in and keep things afloat. There is a great amount of trust and respect for one another. Most recently, over the past year Bernie has taken a more backseat role in the company because she has two children with special needs, but she still plays a vital role in networking and business development. But this just proves her awesomeness in choosing family first and priorities where they should be.
Has it been a smooth road?
Oh man, the bumpiest of roads. We feel like finding a groove with all the red tape with the health department and the State was our first struggle like even though our product is vegan a dairy license is required for “imitation ice cream products”??? Doesn’t make any sense, but we have to navigate through the powers that be. We have never had a big financial investment and have been chasing all our opportunities and growing with them. Although it makes for an exciting ride it definitely holds us back. Learning how to scale up and streamline production without a large amount of funds is still one of our biggest hurdles, but it seems that it has always taken a client with an order that exceeds our current capabilities to push us to the next level and we just figure it out!
We also have been approached a couple of times for some seemingly amazing partnering opportunities promising exposure and creative outlets and we jumped right in full of excitement, but let’s just say they have turned out less than ideal. But we sure have learned a lot about trusting our instincts and the brutal lessons on who to trust and how important it is for us to stay true to our brand and mission. One of our biggest struggles which we think we have finally found a solution is to have a completely eco-friendly packaging. We are currently working on using biodegradable bags and edible sticks! Oh yeah, and are very first purchase of our vintage mailman truck we wanted to convert to an adorable ice cream truck, it caught on fire when Angie was driving it!
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Mom and Pop Shop story. Tell us more about the business.
We are an all-natural ice pop company run by three moms and best friends on a mission to make life a little sweeter (and shhhh!…also healthier!). Together we offer a yummy ice pop using only whole fruit, with no processed sugar, no dairy, no preservatives, no artificial colors or flavors and some hidden superfoods for our children and everyone to enjoy! Some of our more unexpected superfoods include chia seeds, spirulina, kale, spinach, avocado, matcha, dandelion and turmeric. We have a wide variety of natural sweeteners that fit even the strictest dietary needs, the list includes dates, monk fruit, coconut nectar, natural fruit juices and simply the fruit itself! We are nut-free, gluten-free and vegan.
Also, our adorable branding and “cute” factor of our carts and signage set us apart. This is where it helps having resident artists comes in handy. People Oooh and Aaaah at our set up before they read our flavors. We also offers different customization packages, where Angie can do a custom signage and menus to fit your themed party, wedding and corporate events. We can even go the step further and do all the invitations and decorations and do custom sticks and bags for the pops. We have even done a healthy candy bar!
What we are most proud of ourselves as a company is that…we just get IT! We know families. As female founders we understand the craziness of daily life and there is no better multitasker than a mother. We treat every client as family and the mentality that it takes a village. We get the mom trying to put together an amazing first birthday who wants to make it memorable but also wholesome and healthy. Even with our corporate events, we give them that “mom and pop” customer service and we seriously treat each client as a friend and troubleshoot through custom orders, tight budgets and ridiculous timelines. And as often as we can we like to donate our services and pops to local schools and nonprofits, especially our favorite organization Worthy of Love that accomplishes an extraordinary feat of throwing elaborate dream birthday parties every month for children and their families living in skid row.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
It’s funny, we feel like we were trendsetters for the ice pop world. The artisan/gourmet pop definitely existed when we entered the scene, but no one was really doing healthy pops six years ago. We were making our own oat milk and date syrup before it could be found on the shelves of Sprouts and Whole Foods. With consumers not only in hip West LA but really spreading throughout the globe, demanding more healthy, minimally processed foods we have noticed a lot more companies starting to use alternative sweeteners and whole fruit.
We also predict (and HOPE!) more companies turn more eco-friendly and less plastic. It is extremely difficult to go plastic-free in the frozen food world due to freezer burn and ice crystallization but we feel like this is another consumer concern and rightly so. We hope again to be pioneers in this arena as well. We have a few exciting and innovative ideas up our sleeve for our pops that might revolutionize the pop industry but you will have to stay tuned for those game changers (wink wink).
Contact Info:
- Website: http://momandpopshoptruck.com
- Phone: (424) 229-1758
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @momandpopshoptruck
Image Credit:
Anya Kernes, Bernie Dickson
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