Duncan Bannatynes Ice Cream Vans Business from £450 to £300,000 in Under 2 years!

This is a story about a man on a mission to create a profitable ice cream business from scratch using some great savvy mobile catering techniques and motivated entrepreneurial spirit.

Duncan’s story shows us how a simple ice cream van gave him his first start in business and lead him to his £250 million+ fortune of what he is today.

Duncan grew up in Clydebank and in his early teens he joined the Navy. He left the Navy at 19 after a disagreement with a commanding officer and lived in Jersey where he gained a reputation as a bit of a party animal…

He moved to Jersey after losing his licence for drink driving as some told him his driving licence would still be valid there. He tried to get a work as a bartender, but thought if he can’t then at least he can drive a taxi with his licence. He founded a bar job and made some friends in this bar. Working in the bar meant he had the mornings free, so he’d often start the day on the beach.

Whilst in Jersey he also did other occasional jobs, like deck-chair attendant, hospital porter, lorry driver and long hour night shifts at a bakery. He survived on a tiny amount of money and it was virtually impossible for non-residents to start a business in Jersey, unless they’re incredibly wealthy, so there was no incentive to do anything other than part-time jobs.

It was when sitting on the beach of Jersey one Sunday morning he had picked up a newspaper to read when he read the story about a man who’d started a business on a shoe string and gone on to become a millionaire (sure it was Sir Alan Sugar).

It was then that Duncan boldly told Gail, his then girlfriend that they were moving back to mainland Britain to become millionaires. At first she thought he was joking, but never have truer words been spoken !!

Mr Bannatyne thought to himself, “if this Alan Sugar guy can do it, then so can I”. He moved to Stockton-On-Tees with his now ex-wife Gail and with barely any money to his name, no resources and no business skills bought an ice-cream van for £450 from a car auction and at the age of 31, started his own ice cream vending business.

It was called Catweasel and was an old Vauxhall viva ancient van that broke down quite a few times. He started the ice-cream business as he knew he did not need any staff, and didn’t need much capital and seemed an easy business to start without much business knowledge. And so it was born… ‘Duncan’s Super Ices’. The only problem was, he was too tall to stand up in it properly. The only way to stand up properly was without shoes, so he drove round in his socks!

Most ice-cream business in the country served soft ice-cream as it was easier to serve. Duncan decided to serve hard ice-cream in scoops. Although most people said it would not work as he cannot sell them as quickly as hard ice-cream he imported a special scoop from America that is strong and can quickly serve hard ice-cream.

This scoop left a little indented mark on top, like a smile. He then later on filled this smile with strawberry sauce and added some aniseed balls for eyes. Suddenly he realized he could charge 20% more for an ice-cream with a face. These face ice-creams became very popular with kids and Duncan’s Super Ices got off to a great start.

He then cleverly gave names to all his ice-creams using popular children’s TV characters such as the Muppets and began getting faster and often found himself holding 8 ice creams in one hand.  He was loving the ice cream business, he loved kids and was starting to reap the rewards it produced.

Duncan’s marketing and personal approach ensured his customers kept coming back. He’d take pictures of the kids and display them on the van so when they heard or saw him pull up kids would race out to see the photos of themselves and always end up buying something. For some reason in the early eighties it was fashionable for kids to wear jumpers with their name on them which made the personal service a tad easier too.

A competitor turned up and started to make life difficult for him, but Duncan soon managed to eliminate his competition and decided to buyout the competitor’s ice cream van. He now had two vans and staff…

From street vending to concession stand vending he decided to take these two vans to a local park in the hot summer days and sell his ice-creams there.

Duncan bid around £2000 for a concession contract at a popular park and decided to park his vans there and sell ice-cream during the summer months. To trade from the park he needed a license which he soon obtained from the local council.

That first summer he made £18 000 in the park. Duncan describes the summer holidays in the park as ‘some of the easiest money he has ever made’. The amazing thing was, no other ice-cream business phoned the Council for a license. He was new to this whole business and thought if he could see this opportunity, why did no one ever think of this? The reason: everyone in the country selling ice-cream was happy with selling enough ice-cream to turn a decent profit and live from that, however Duncan was not!

By this time Duncan and Gail had their first baby girl together. A great thing about the ice cream van business he said was that business didn’t really start until after 3 o’clock when the kids finished school for the day, which meant plenty of time with the new family.

He carried on building his business earning £10,000+ per week in the summer months and read somewhere that he was earning more than top airline pilots were getting paid!

By his second baby daughters birth Duncan could afford a car with ‘electric windows’ and had already been able to move his new family to a much bigger five bedroom house from the earnings of Duncan’s Super Ices.

Towards the end of the second year Duncan had a turnover of around £300,000 a year of which about £70 000 was profit that he took as a salary. This is the equivalent of about £120,000 today. He had quickly gone from a £450 van bough at auction to a six van thriving 300k per year business in just two short years. Not bad for a small ice cream business!

Duncan Bannatyne shows us that anyone with a little hard work and initiative prepared to take the dive and go for it can earn a small fortune in the ice cream business. Now in his late 40’s he is a multi-millionaire with a personal fortune far exceeding £250 million all starting from a small mobile catering ice cream business. Nice!