Jeremiah’s Italian Ice ended 2024 with 163 units, a 68 percent increase from 2022.
For Michael Keller, success is all about maintaining strong unit-level economics. Keller, the CEO of Jeremiah’s Italian Ice, finds this task more crucial than ever amid changing consumer behaviors and a challenged supply chain environment.
“Our whole industry—in particular the QSR segment of our industry, which is enormous—is sailing into some serious headwinds,” he said. “Consumer behavior is changing, and they’re not reading value the same way in the quick-service restaurant industry that they always did for decades.”
To combat this, Jeremiah’s honed in on menu platform extensions, seen with the company’s “hop-away treats” and “jelati cakes,” a play on ice cream cakes. The brand also expanded its portion sizes a little more than a year ago by introducing its smallest (and cheapest) “tadpole mini” size.
Michael Keller is the CEO of Jeremiah's Italian Ice.
“It was a very low price for a consumer to enter into our brand or the menu at an entry-level price point,” Keller said. “Unlike food QSRs that could put value meals together because they’re doing breakfast, lunch, dinner, we’re not in the meal business. We have to take a different approach to value, and we believe our tadpoles are a really good step in that direction.”
The frozen treat concept saw sales growth 61.1 percent from 2022 to 2024, going from $42 million to $68 million. Similar strides were made in unit growth, up 68 percent to end 2024 with 163 stores.
“The brand itself has been around for 30 years, so there’s so much that’s tried and true about it,” Keller said. “As opposed to a new concept … we have figured a lot of our stuff out: our menu, our operations, our training, things that are really at the core of how the concept works.”