Meet Pibool (David) Koonvirarak | Entrepreneur / Restauranteur

We had the good fortune of connecting with Pibool (David) Koonvirarak and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Pibool (David), we’d love to start by asking you about lessons learned. Is there a lesson you can share with us?
The biggest important lesson is the difference between reacting VS responding. Reacting is usually based on what you’ve seen other people do in addition to your own emotion at the time, which is mostly wrong and generate very poor results. Responding, on the other hand, is a much better way to handle any situation you may face. Let me give you some examples of when I deal with my employees when I first started my business.

A customer wrote a bad review on Yelp complaining about one of my employees, Zach. One of the things she mentioned was that she “feels” like the employee doesn’t want to be there and gave her very bad service. The fact that I know my employee and the fact that while he has more customer service to learn, he’s a good person. Instead of punishing him by writing him up or cut off his hours as many managers would, I sent him and his girlfriend on a VIP tour at the world of Coke and asked him to write me an essay of what he learn about customer service there. Everything is paid for. While I didn’t specify how long the essay would be, he wrote a very meaningful 2 full-page, single space describing his experience.

Before I react and getting upset with him, I gave him a chance to explain the situation from his side and found out that the customer actually got offended when she asked him how to eat the ice cream (It’s rolled up beautifully in a cup) and Zach only pointed his finger to where the spoons are. I responded to the customer and she voluntarily removed her review.

Zach has become one of the strongest employees we have.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
I-CE-NY is the originator rolled ice cream shop created by my friend who invented the rolled ice cream method. What sets us apart are our strong branding, our top notch customer service, and the cleanliness of the shop. While we understand our business has a low barrier of entry, we focus on “what” we create and now “How” we make the ice cream, like many other competitors.

What I most proud of was the fact that the ice cream we created, Mango Sticky Rice Ice Cream, is our best seller 99% of the time. It’s something I’ve always wanted to create. I am proud of it because the ice cream connects people from different cultures. You’ll find very diverse customers walking to my shop ordering Mango Sticky Rice Ice Cream and I love it.

As I said, the business has a very low barrier of entry so it is a very competitive market from the get-go. You’ll find rolled ice cream shops popping up everywhere. We overcame the problem with our strong brand and marketing strategy. We stay very consistent with what we put on the menu.

The biggest lesson I learned was that customers aren’t always right and you can’t go after every single one, just the ones that matter. Good customers will tell 10 other good customers. Bad customers bring in 10 other bad customers. We create the business because we want our customers to experience the ice cream we created, not because we want to make a ridiculous amount of money.

One of the things many customers probably don’t see or know of is that we care about our employees and our management is probably one of the most unorthodox out there. For example, our work schedule is collectively created by every employee. Every staff has input on when to work and how many staff on the floor we need during certain hours.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Food-wise here is the list of my fav place: Dim sum at Royal China, Laotian food at Hot Cafe in Riverdale, Bubble tea from Kung Fu Tea, Korean BBQ at KBBQ Factory, Brazilian steak house at Fogo De Chao, Thai food at Nan, Cantonese food at Bobo Garden and of course, Mango sticky rice ice cream from I-CE-NY.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I’d like to give a shoutout to Niki, who owns 26 Thai Restaurants. Niki started her first restaurant about the same time I started my ice cream shop. She now has 4 locations around the Atlanta Metro area. She’s one tough leader.

Website: icenyicecream.com

Instagram: icenyatlanta

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pkoonvirarak/

Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/iceny-atlanta-doraville-3?osq=iceny

Other: Besides this ice cream shop, I just recently opened a restaurant called Three Roosters in NYC. I occasionally run a pop-up here and there in Atlanta. You should follow @threeroostersthai threeroostersthai.com