Move over Breyers, there’s a new ice cream in town.
At Chill-N Nitrogen Ice Cream, ice cream comes to guests as fresh as possible. It does not come to the store already made. This ice cream is made to order.
“The first thing that you do is choose your base,” co-owner Gabriel Pineda said. “That is one of the things that we think is a big difference from any other ice cream in town and around the U.S.”
The other partners in the happy-making business are Andres Castaneda Bochmann and Claudio Wingartz Otaduy. All three of the partners have been friends since they were students at a Miami high school.
It’s that made-to-order aspect that makes Chill-N unique and Tucson now has one of its own with more to come.
This is no hidden secret recipe. Customers see their ice cream made right in front of them. Still, there are lots of decisions to be made before customers get a dish handed to them. There’s the base, of course, and there are plenty of those including cream, lactose-free, sugar-free, Dole whip, frozen yogurt and vegan. And perhaps a customer is in the mood for chocolate. That can be added to the base too.
There are add-ins, stuff like nuts, chocolate chips, fruit. Then comes the magic: Nitrogen.
“It’s not like the toppings are added on top of the ice cream,” Andres said. “The idea is that you have the cream base and you add all the toppings and all the flavors inside. Then it’s all mixed in a machine and while it’s getting mixed, this other machine shoots off the nitrogen into the ice cream. The difference between making the ice cream via freezing it versus via nitrogen is that when you freeze it in a freezer the ice cream forms ice crystals and that makes it a little rougher. The idea with the nitrogen is that it flash-freezes it and the nitrogen doesn’t create as many ice crystals so the texture of the ice cream is way more creamy.”
It all comes out and to the customer in a cup. A small serving runs anywhere from $5.80 to about $7 depending on the add-ins.
The owners are not inexperienced business people. All are college graduates with degrees in business and have other business partnerships.
“Andres and Claudio currently own a soccer agency,” Gabriel said. “They focus on Mexican American soccer players who are here in the U.S. and they represent them.”
Gabriel also has another venture. He owns a fitness studio in Tucson and “Claudio has been helping me in all of the administrative side of the studio,” he said. Plus, Gabriel and Andres both come from a family of entrepreneurs. They both said they want to own their own time.
On the other hand, Claudio never really thought about having his own business.
“For me, I might be the odd one out because the reality is I didn’t think about (entrepreneurship) at all,” he said. “It’s just I love soccer and I wanted to work in soccer, whether it was freelance or for a soccer club or a league or whatever, but I knew I wanted to be in that. At no point did it really cross my mind, ‘Oh, I want to be an entrepreneur and build my own stuff,’ but as time has passed good opportunities have come up and led me towards that path and direction.”
But out of all the franchises the trio could have chosen, why this one?
“I moved to Tucson 3-½ years ago and I have been an ice cream lover,” Gabriel said. “That was my regular place to go on dates, to go by myself, and when I got here, to be honest there were very limited options and the options that we did have were not to my taste.”
Of course he could get ice cream at the store but Gabriel wanted something more.
“For me it was more about the experience of going out and sharing that experience with someone rather than just buying a pint in the supermarket and eating it in my house.”
He began noticing there was a need for a place where people could share an ice cream experience and that led to another thought.
“Well, if this is a big need, what is a business that stands out in the ice cream industry?” he asked himself.
Then he remembered that he had a great ice cream and a great time at Miami’s Chill-N, and he wasn’t the only one.
“All high schoolers went after school or they had birthday parties or they worked with high school football teams, soccer teams to do programs,” Gabriel said. “They also worked with schools to do chemistry projects.”
But more importantly, the Miami shop “created a sense of community besides having great ice cream so I thought this is the place that we need in Tucson.”
What really sold the partners on this particular franchise was the fact that Chill-N is a small company and just beginning its franchise operation,
“It was just not one more franchise,” Gabriel said. “This was a very small company that just started their franchise program where franchisees were able to have a word in the business… It was a franchise that was going to give us all this expertise and this fantastic product but we also are going to be able to have our input and we were also going to be able to have a little bit of freedom to operate our stores.”
This first store came with a buy-in at $40,000. That does not pay for the equipment or remodeling or anything else but is not outrageous as franchises go.
The store is at Sunrise Village on the corner of Swan and Sunrise Drive, but this is not the last Chill-N the partners will open.
“Our idea is to basically take over the entire southwest for all the Chill-N stores,” Gabriel said.
Chill-N Nitrogen Ice Cream
4777 E. Sunrise Drive, Ste 139, Sunrise Village
Noon to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, closed Sunday and Monday