 History
Gofer Ice Cream was first documented in 1998. Founder Jay Ragusa, who was always interested in starting a business, developed the concept of Gofer Ice Cream while attending Graduate School. It was during a Small Business Entrepreneurship course he first coined the clever play on words. The name suggests let’s “Go For Ice Cream” with a cartoon gopher holding an ice cream cone as the design. The “Lets” was later dropped and a unique spelling of go-for or gopher was conceived as the logo was developed. He believed most people would eventually “get it”.
The entire idea was placed on the back burner while Jay pursued other interests. When an eight year career on Wall Street ended with the collapse of the dot com bubble, the Gofer Ice Cream business plan was taken off the shelf, refined, and put into action.
With the help of his family, in 2003 Gofer Ice Cream debuted in Greenwich, Conn. Customer reaction was very positive from the beginning, so stores in nearby Darien and Stamford soon followed. Through customer feedback, and trial and error, the company was able to become more efficient and began to market the concept more aggressively.
In 2006 Gofer Ice Cream was named Best Ice Cream Shop in “The Best of The Gold Coast” a People’s Choice Award encompassing Fairfield County, Conn. This year the decision to expand to more locations via franchising was also approved and work on the Franchise program began… |
