Popular Brooklyn-Based Ice Cream Shop Ample Hills Files for Bankruptcy
By Nicholas Rizzi March 16, 2020 1:09 pm
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The popular Brooklyn-based ice cream shop Ample Hills Creamery filed for bankruptcy yesterday in an attempt to “restructure and refocus” its operations, the company said.
Ample Hills — which was founded in 2011 by Brian Smith and Jackie Cuscuna — submitted Chapter 11 proceedings with liabilities between $10 million to $50 million listed in one of its several filings, court records show.
The news was first reported by The Real Deal.
“We are taking the necessary next steps to preserve and ultimately bring Ample Hills into its next phase,” a spokeswoman for Ample Hills told Commercial Observer in a statement. “We have learned a lot from our growth and this is a strategic decision that allows us to course-correct and continue doing what we love most: creating a delicious product from scratch, in our beloved Brooklyn home.”
The spokeswoman did not say if Ample Hills plans to shutter any of its 16 outposts in New York City, New Jersey and Florida.
Husband-and-wife team Smith and Cuscuna started Ample Hills in 2011 as a pushcart in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn and later opened its first brick-and-mortar location in the neighborhood at 623 Vanderbilt Avenue, according to its website.
The ice cream purveyor closed on a $4 million fundraising round in 2015 and later grew to 13 locations in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens along with two in Florida and one in Jersey City, N.J., Brooklyn Magazine reported. In 2018, Ample Hills opened a 15,000-square-foot factory with an ice cream museum attached at 421 Van Brunt Street in Red Hook, as CO previously reported.
The company also had a location in Los Angeles but it shuttered in January after just 15 months, Eater reported.
