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From sidewalk dream to moonlight delight. On a warm August afternoon in 2006, while mowing her lawn, Heidi Grenek's mind wandered to ice cream. She thought about how great it would be to create a "different" kind of ice cream shop - one where the experience was as amazing as the ice cream. She thought about a mission to support education and how the shop could be used to role model socially and environmentally responsible business practices. She thought about the staff and the community, and how they could benefit. And she thought about the location (she has a big lawn and had a lot of time to work out the details of her newly formed plan). It just so happened that her neighbor, Jeff Seidel, was putting the finishing touches on a new building that would be perfect right in their hometown village of Fairport, NY. A day or so later, Heidi ran in to Jeff on the sidewalk in front of their houses. As she started to share her "big idea" with Jeff, she was surprised and delighted to find out he had been thinking about a similar venture with similar objectives. He suggested they flesh the idea out a little further and the following week they took a road trip to the Cornell University Dairy to learn more about the business (and, as it turned out, more than they ever though they would know about the types of pasteurization!). Undeterred as they stood in inch deep sanitizer on the production floor, Jeff and Heidi asked the experts many questions about the industry, the trends, and the tricks of the trade. They left Cornell energized and churning with ideas. And so it began, with two like-minded neighbors having a sidewalk conversation about their shared vision. |