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Business Leader
KInd Ice cReAM
n icole Bhar and her sister Candyce Morris love ice cream. So does
Bhar’s wife, Paula Shyba. But they’re also entrepreneurs who know how to study the local market. “I grew up in Calgary, where we were so used to going to Village Ice Cream for dessert after dinner,” Shyba says. “And for years, we were just like, why doesn’t that exist in Edmonton?”
So the trio opened the first Kind Ice Cream in Ritchie and helped kick off Edmonton’s ice cream boom. “We’ve seen it change so much and become so vibrant that we wanted to be a part of that,” Bhar continues. “We just knew right from the get-go that we wanted that spot.”
That spot is 800 square feet, so the trio built out the front 300 feet and made all the ice cream in the back. “We were so confident in our business plan, and the space was so perfect,” Morris says. “We were like, ‘We’ll just be here forever.’”
They outgrew the kitchen on the first day.
“We made as much ice cream as we possibly could, opened our doors and had a lineup down the block, which was incredible,” Shyba says.
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