Clockwise from left: The outside of the new shop,
founders Brian Smith and Jackie Cuscuna, the
ordering counter of The Social, the ‘Party Room’
inside the store, and a donut sundae.
Photos by Ben Brachfeld
GETTING STARTED’
make a comeback with ‘The Social’
COURIER LIFE, JULY 30-AUG. 5, 2021 3
and the donuts, it’s very exciting
to see the response and the
feedback. We’re just getting
started.”
Ample Hills, which opened
its fi rst scoop shop on Vanderbilt
Avenue in Prospect
Heights in 2011, quickly ascended
the ranks of the
Brooklyn ice cream world
with their unique fl avors
and blends, and expanded
rapidly, running 16 stores in
four states and a massive production
facility in Red Hook
at their commercial peak in
2019.
While sales were high and
the brand remained a fanfavorite,
Smith said that the
couple had simply let the success
go to their head and expanded
too quickly, with the
15,000-square-foot, $6.5 million
Red Hook factory being
the nail in the coffi n for the
chain’s fi nances. The Oregon
manufacturing company,
Schmitt Industries, purchased
Ample Hills for just
$1 million in 2020, despite
the company having done $10
million in sales the year before,
per bankruptcy fi lings.
Starting over, Smith says
he wants to farm out the
business and fi nancial side
of things, which he admits he
was never good at, and stick
to what he knows best: making
ice cream.
“Even if The Social grows
into a larger business, I want
to remain focused on what I
like to do, which is create fun
fl avors of ice cream,” he said.
The Social’s space is three
times the size of Ample Hills’
original Prospect Heights location,
Smith said, and it has
a large party room that they
will use for birthdays, ice
cream socials, classes, and
other activities. The main
space holds fi ve large booths
plus outdoor seating in lawn
chairs. The kitchen features
a large window out into the
main area so gorgers can see
how the ice cream sausage
gets made, with large steps
next to it so young children
can see as well.
“It’s theatrical,” Smith
said. “People don’t necessarily
get to see ice cream being
made all the time.”
Once a month, The Social
plans to partner with a local
nonprofi t to hold an ice cream
social fundraiser, where they
will unveil a new fl avor-ofthe
month voted on by fans
online and allow kids to
churn it themselves.
As for the ice cream itself,
all of the fl avors are new, with
no importations from the Ample
Hills days, and they will
also be serving donuts, ice
cream sodas, and sundaes,
to name a few. Everything is
made from scratch in-house,
currently only by Smith and
one other employee, though
they plan to scale up their hiring
to meet demand.
Brooklyn Paper visited
The Social on Tuesday and
sampled a donut sundae, featuring
a cinnamon donut,
one scoop of Hydrox cookies
and cream (Hydrox being
the original Oreo, which
Oreo then got rich off of),
and one scoop of Double
the Dough cookie dough ice
cream, along with hot fudge,
milky whipped cream, and
a cherry. While the donuts
have room for improvement,
the ice cream is just as good
as you remember it.
The couple will not be leaving
behind what they learned
at Ample Hills, of course,
with most of the fl avors being
innovations upon fan favorites.
For instance, Ample
Hills’ eccentric Breakfast
Trash, where ice cream was
infused with numerous cereals
and then topped with
Fruity Pebbles and Froot
Loops, has been reborn as O
Captain! My Captain!, which
is Cap’ Crunch infused ice
cream topped with Fruity
Pebbles tossed in white chocolate,
which Smith says will
keep the Fruity Pebbles from
getting soggy.
“Why would we open something
and just do the same
exact thing we did before,”
Smith said. “People expect us
to innovate and improve upon
what we did. That’s what excites
me about making ice
cream.”