It has been said, ‘You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy ice-cream. And that’s kind of the same thing.’ This idea is at the heart of our featured #SmallBizFriday Business of the Week – Cold Gold Artisan Ice-Cream & Sorbet.
Cold Gold creates speciality 100% natural ice-cream and sorbet. With over 800 flavours, free from preservatives, artificial flavouring, colouring and stabilisers, they also cater for a variety of dietary requirements including vegan, banting, low carb high fat, diabetic and paleo. This means that Cold Gold ice-cream truly is a guilt-free delight. What makes it even more noteworthy is that Cold Gold not only uses natural, local, seasonal ingredients but believes in supporting small local businesses, entrepreneurs and farmers as far as possible. Their aim is to empower them to grow their businesses as Cold Gold grows theirs.
Cold Gold was the brainchild of the young, inspiring, qualified chef, Janine van Zyl. Launched in November 2011, Janine identified a gap in the market for ice-cream that was 100% natural, free of preservatives, chemicals and artificial additives. With her immense passion for health and food, she started in her small flat, selling at markets and anywhere there was a demand. In no time at all the business outgrew the flat and Cold Gold HQ opened its doors at Bosman’s Crossing in Stellenbosch in September 2012.
With her business growing faster than she could manage on her own, she soon realised the need to employ staff. But her values stretch far further than just hiring employees. She believes in empowering and training her staff to be proud of their work and passionate about the product. Janine explains, ‘I often get the question from people who want to start their own business: What is the secret to your success? Well, the short answer is the Cold Gold Team (myself, Peace and Memory). If you encourage, empower, teach and look after your staff, they will look after your business and have pride and passion for their work. If you are, however a boss and not a leader, your staff won’t have pride in their work and won’t look after your business which will result in failure as they will work to look forward to a weekend, not work because they really want to be there.’
The way Janine runs her business is indicative of a belief that her success is not her own, rather she prefers to share it with her staff, her suppliers and her community.
Each year Cold Gold makes a sizeable donation (in the form of ice-cream) to a charity that supports and rehabilitates abused women and children. She also has a strong environmental focus choosing to be as earth-friendly as possible, by only using bio degradable packaging, saving water and electricity, having absolutely no wastage of ingredients and recycling all wet, dry and compostable matter.
As Janine holds onto the philosophy that, ‘Ice-cream makes people happy and everybody deserves to be happy’, she continues to dream of the day her ice-cream will be available throughout South Africa.
In 2015, Janine, aged only 24, was awarded the Young Entrepreneur Champion award at the South African Small Business Awards, hosted by the National Small Business Chamber.
For more on Cold Gold Ice-Cream & Sorbet visit:
https://www.facebook.com/coldgoldicecream
www.coldgold.co.za
Small Business Friday is brought to you by the National Small Business Chamber (NSBC) and Nedbank (Title Sponsor) and encourages all South Africans to interact and support small business everyday; especially every Friday and even more so on Small Business Friday, the first Friday of Spring every year. This grows local communities, drives job creation and ultimately builds the nation. With your support small business will be able to employ more, therefore reducing rates of unemployment and harvesting the entrepreneurial spirit.
For more on Small Business Friday visit:
www.smallbusinessfriday.co.za
www.facebook.com/smallbizfriday
www.twitter.com/smallbizfriday
#SmallBizFriday
