• Dippin’ Dots ice cream is an American theme park staple. 
• With theme park closures and competition cancellations having became the conventional for the period of the pandemic, one other aspect of the company’s trade is conserving it afloat: licensing its cryogenic know-how.
• Scott Fischer, the company’s CEO, spoke to Enterprise Insider about this pivot and his plans for the company going ahead.
• Consult with Enterprise Insider’s homepage for more tales.

Dippin’ Dots, the cherished ice cream stamp, has cemented a plight for itself squarely in American culture. The colourful, flash-frozen bits of ice cream were a staple in theme parks, gala’s, and games valid by diagram of the nation for the reason that 1980s when founder Curt Jones started the trade.

However the social distancing guidelines of the coronavirus pandemic have confidence brought the company’s traditional in-particular person fanfare to an abrupt end. Two of the company’s most well-known aspects of sale — theme parks and wearing events — had been closed for several months within the summertime and placed on indefinite preserve respectively. In that vacuum, the company has pivoted to making the most of one other aspect of its trade model: licensing its cryogenic know-how.

Per the company net plight, their cryogenics job uses liquid nitrogen to flash freeze products. The job, per the positioning, “is perfect as a vital step for any products that can have confidence to be freeze-dried.”

“I didn’t know what the market turned into as soon as going to be but I figured if we brought visibility to our cryogenic job utilizing the fairness of Dippin dots that the trade would arrive to us. And it did,” CEO Scott Fischer, who took over the ropes of the company in 2012, told Enterprise Insider.

Business A trade pivot to licensing its trademark know-how

The company headquarters and its production vegetation are based fully in Paducah, Kentucky.

Fischer stated the company’s expansion into cryogenics started about two years within the past but that the trade started to snowball within the past year. To this point, he stated, the company has worked with lending the know-how into plant-based fully meat products and pharmaceutical products. This diversification is amazingly precious with the dip in ice cream sales.

In keeping with numbers Fischer shared with Enterprise Insider, the company’s ice cream sales declined by 85% between April 2019 and April 2020, whereas cryogenics grew by 348%. He says plant-based fully meat is the company’s most successful division.

“Now we have confidence just among the beautiful, accepted brands within the plant-based fully meat segments, these that you just might seemingly seemingly seemingly undercover agent at the grocery stores or by Costcos or rapid-relieve eating locations and what we attain is we have confidence oils that we set aside by diagram of our cryogenic job and the oils arrive out love small chronically frozen pellets of simulated corpulent,” Fischer stated. “Those simulated fats are what goes recede into the plant-based fully meats.” Matt Siegler, a company spokesperson, declined to title any of the clients Dippin Dots is at the second working with.

Even with this pivot, the company shared that it has needed to adjust its crew to salvage by diagram of COVID-19.

The company added a second plant in August 2020, pictured above, in Paducah, Kentucky, to address its cryogenics demands. The $3.2 million plant is at the second operating at half of ability and with coronavirus-generation guidelines to preserve its staff protected, but Fischer stated he anticipates utilizing 90 of us when it is at corpulent ability. The company also has plans to develop cryogenics know-how licensing to animal feed, dietary supplements, exact meat, and butter.

“With a trade that is amazingly seasonal and if truth be told heavy in obvious areas, if something occurs and if that plight turned into as soon as shut down, it is subtle to proceed to make and preserve cash flows,” Fischer stated. “So diversification, I realized, is a actually stunning play for any trade, but especially a trade that is heavily focused in a single market.”