The COVID-19 pandemic has turned our world upside down, with small businesses being hit especially hard. This is a pivotal time for SMBs, and the way they respond to the pressure will determine how their business runs for years to come. Many companies are taking this difficult situation and turning it into an opportunity. In our Positive Pivots series, we’re diving deeper into what these innovative businesses have done, and what lies beneath the surface to produce this kind of creativity and resilience.

This week we spoke with JP Lopez, Owner and Founder of Wanderlust Creamery, about his company’s pivot and how turning to ecommerce helped him keep his staff working.

What is Wanderlust Creamery?

We’re an artisanal ice cream shop based in LA. We were founded in 2015 and now have four stores in LA. Our business model is based on travel; every flavor is based on a location. It could be somewhere we’ve been or want to go. Once COVID-19 hit, we started making flavors based on experiences. We evolved into that because we couldn’t travel anywhere.

How did your product offering pivot during this unusual time?

My new year's resolution in 2020 was to get our business online. But we kept putting it off to open more retail stores. When the shutdowns were put in place, we decided it was time to turn to ecommerce. We quickly made a business plan — we would release ice cream flavor drops and ship them to California and Nevada. We launched the first drop in mid-April with 2,000 pints. We sold out in about five minutes.

We realized we needed to make more ice cream and improve our website. We got to work. Since April, we’ve created new mixes of 6-8 flavors per month. We started doing flavor drops every two weeks throughout 2020.

What is the lasting impact those changes will have on your business?

We always knew ecommerce was something we had to adopt, but we kept pushing it off. It’s become a major focus now because of the reach we have. It’s now one of the biggest parts of our business. There’s a lot of areas we still need to build out — like sourcing and logistics — but, in the middle of COVID-19, it gave us something to think about.

Has there been a silver lining for your business throughout the COVID-19 pandemic?

During the first month of COVID-19, my wife and I freaked out. We have three kids under three. Once we got over that, we were thinking about what we could do. When your business is operating, you can’t re-evaluate. We finally had some breathing room to decide what’s working and what we should work on. Before march, ecommerce wouldn’t have even happened because we were so focused on the retail side.

COVID-19 hurt a lot of businesses, but it helped us reimagine ours. It also allowed us to keep our production team, and we turned our events employees into a fulfillment team. They were all willing to join. We’re actually paying them more than before! We like to only promote from within, so it was nice to be able to expand their roles during this tough time.