After 15 Years In Business, Three Twins Ice Cream Has Permanently Closed

Even after moving production to Wisconsin, Three Twins Ice Cream couldn’t make things work.

Three Twins Ice Cream, an organic ice cream brand that was founded in Petaluma about 15 years ago, announced on Friday that it had ceased operations for good. According to a Facebook post from founder Neal Gottlieb, “the business had been unsustainable and a capital infusion was necessary” even prior to the coronavirus crisis, but “any chances of a last minute solution were erased by the pandemic.”

The news likely came as a shock to fans of the brand, which was ubiquitous in grocery store freezers and boasted shops in San Francisco’s Lower Haight, Berkeley, and Larkspur. But things have never come easily for the ice cream company, which was known for stunts like its $3,300 “world’s most expensive sundae” and Gottlieb’s decision to compete in a 2016 season of the TV show Survivor.

Speaking with the North Bay Business Journal in June of 2019, Gottlieb said that the company had moved its production operation to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, in an effort to cut costs, as the company has never turned a profit. In Friday’s Facebook post. Gottlieb said “we were always working towards a scale where we could have sustained profitability, but in more recent years we saw the business contract and margins get squeezed further,” hence the complete closure of the company.

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