Featured Spotlight: Katherine O’Brien – The Ice Cream Bike Lady!

When did you start your side hustle, and where did you find the inspiration for it?

My side hustle journey has been two-fold. I started my ice cream business, Cream Cruiser, in May of 2015 kind of on a whim. I was working a regular 9-5 but always knew that I wanted to create something that was my own.

At the time, I was walking to my 9-5 job through the Inner Harbor of Baltimore, which, over the summer, was always filled with lots of visitors and corporate commuters such as myself. Some days, there would be so many people that you could hardly navigate through the crowds. I was constantly thinking to myself how amazing an ice cream cart would be on a hot, sunny day.

Also, at this time, the mobile food industry had really started to gain traction. I wasn’t interested in starting an ice cream truck because of the investment. I wanted something smaller and simpler. After some research and phone calls, I found a small business that manufactured custom food bikes. And within minutes of speaking with them, I knew it was for me.

I got the entire business up and running for under $10,000 and launched in just a few months. I started at a local farmers market, and it wasn’t long until I got into catering weddings, corporate and college events, etc.

I worked a full-time job and sold ice cream during the summer for over three years to be able to put every penny back into the business. Finally, in 2018, I quit my job to go all in on my ice cream business. At this time, I also expanded into wholesale and even private label.

The second part of my side hustle journey came into play after a tough few years from 2020-2022. As a small business in the food and beverage and events industry, I felt like I could not keep my head above water and knew that something needed to change.

As events were introduced back into our lives, my little catering business started to take off. All of a sudden, I got my fire back and had a great income stream that I had been missing over the past two years during the pandemic. Towards the end of 2022, I decided to stop focusing on the wholesale and private label and go back to doing what I loved, which was selling ice cream from a bike at events.

This led me to part two of my side hustle journey. I created Bike Business University to share my love of this ice cream bike business model with as many people as possible. It’s simple, it’s affordable, and it’s fun! My goal is to make the bike business community just as big as the food truck community.