Josh & John’s Ice Cream owner John Krakauer grew up loving artisan ice cream shops in his native Boston. When he opened his first ice cream store nearly 40 years ago in Colorado Springs, he could not have expected, especially with the implementation of his central ice cream-making facility in the Churn Barn, that his business would have grown to the size it has become.
The idea for the ice cream store started when Krakauer was a student at Colorado College in the early 1980s. He graduated in 1985, and original store partner Josh [Paris] also graduated in 1985 from Middlebury College in Vermont. They had been high school friends. Krakauer contacted Paris in his junior year, telling him that he wanted to open up an ice cream store in Colorado Springs. Paris thought it was a good idea. Krakauer says the reason for opening a store was not because they had any secret recipes, but because Krakauer recognized that there wasn’t anything like it in Colorado.
“We grew up in Boston, and in Boston, there are these types of ice cream stores – sort of a gourmet ice cream store thing – everywhere. It’s a little bit like what we see now with breweries.” He says these stores were popping up all over the place in Boston and were super popular.” Krakauer says they would drive for 30 minutes and wait in line for 40 just to get this ice cream.
After starting the business with Krakauer in 1986, Paris left the business four years in, around 1990. At that point, they had two stores, one in downtown Colorado Springs and one in Boulder, which has since closed. “I was teaching at the time and had no way of running a shop that was a hundred miles away.” When that lease was up, Krakauer just said, “Never mind,” and focused on the downtown store.
The Process of Expansion at Josh & John’s Ice Cream
Back in 2011, Krakauer married Lindsey Keller, who is now 50% owner of the business. “And it was she and I really that worked on the expansion that you see now.” In 2013, the couple opened another location in the western part of Colorado Springs in a place called Mountain Shadows. Then, in 2018, they opened another in Flying Horse in Northern Colorado Springs. Then in 2020, they opened yet another one up in Fort Collins. The reason they were able to do this is that they adjusted the model they had used before, where each store would make their own ice cream. They replaced it with a centralized manufacturing space in the Springs which they call the Churn Barn. “When that happened, it really allowed us to focus on two aspects of the business: the production piece including distribution and cost, and the retail piece.”
Moving forward, Krakauer says they have a store in Loveland coming in the summer of 2023. In addition, some people have contacted him about franchises. “We’re kind of deciding in which direction we’re going to go moving forward,” Krakauer explains that with the Churn Barn, they have enormous capacity so now they can open up a store fairly easily because the systems are in place. He says it is not quite cookie-cutter or turnkey, but the business model now lends itself to expansion.
The key for him is that now he comes to the Churn Barn where the ice cream is made every day. “I don’t make it myself, but I have a hand in all of it. So, I taste and modify and come up with new flavors…all of it being made under my watchful eye.” He says the ice cream is better now than it’s ever been. “We used to get [comments] like, ‘Why are the cookies and cream different at this location than this location?’ Well, because too many people were making it. And I didn’t have control over the quality. Now I do.”
Making Flavors and Capacity Like Never Before
The Churn Barn allows Krakauer to do something he couldn’t do before. He has 14 legacy flavors at this point. ”If you go into any of the stores, I actually built some art posters that tell you what each of those flavors is. The truth is that each of those flavors has some story to it.” Malted Mazel Toff is one of his favorites. It is a malted ice cream with Patsy’s Candies that was made for his and Lindsey’s wedding. Another flavor with a story is Purple Mountain Majesty which is a taro-based ice cream with raspberry dark chocolate truffles He was approached to create that as a 100th Anniversary flavor for the Pikes Peak Hill Climb, which is a car race to the top of the mountain.
Krakauer has also been able to do more experimental elements with the Churn Barn. “We made a key lime pie habanero, which is part of our artisan line. And we packed those in pints. We charge an extra dollar for them, but there’s a flavor to that.” They also put out limited editions, and people seem to love it, he says. He uses pistachio as an example. “It seems like a fairly standard flavor, but most pistachio ice creams are made with just almond extract and pistachios in it. But at the Churn Barn, we did some research and found some ingredients, and actually, the pistachio is not an almond extract base, it’s actually a pistachio base.” They make the ice cream on that basis which he said came out phenomenally. They also did a huckleberry brie flavor, as well as one called Salted Banana Sea Turtle. “Another thing that the Churn Barn has allowed us to do is kind of focus on seasonal flavor. So in the summer, we make Palisade Peach ice cream. In March, we made a Bailey Irish Cream ice cream for St. Patrick’s Day.” Currently, they are working on a lavender ice cream for a farm in Cotopaxi. The creativity is endless and just comes down to the availability of ingredients, time, and demand.
All these possibilities have come from the support Krakauer has now. “I always knew that if you wanted to grow this business, what we have now is what would have to happen. I always thought I really needed a production facility. But without the partnership of my family, especially Lindsey, none of it would have been possible.”
The evolution, he says, was having that partner in Lindsey. And now Mark, his brother-in-law as well as John, who’s Lindsay’s brother, and John’s wife all are part of the business. “A lot of people look at [a business] and think, ‘I can do this myself’. And I’ve learned over the years that it’s not such a great idea to try to do it all yourself. I have a lot of help right now. And even though I knew that this was what needed to happen, I also recognize that it wasn’t possible with just me.”
Krakauer is very proud of what they have created. “We have come a long, long way, and I’m just so proud. It’s hard for me to even think about selling it because it’s part of who I am and part of so many people’s lives.” It comes back to quality and focus for Krakauer. “I have a saying…or I have a least favorite saying, actually, which is, ‘If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.’ I see businesses that operate that way. So we adjust that, and we say, ‘If it’s not broken, make it better.’”
