Ice cream shop · Guide Updated August 2026

How Two First-Time F&B Operators Built an Ice Cream Chain and Got Acquired in Five Years

Opening a single ice cream shop is hard. Building it into a chain that gets acquired in five years, with no food industry background, is a different level of hard. That is exactly what 720 Sweets did, and this is the unfiltered version of how it happened.

Where did the idea for 720 Sweets come from?

The concept did not start with a business plan. It started with a trip to Asia.

Wilson traveled to Asia regularly for other businesses he was running. On one of those trips he spotted a small stall selling smoking ice cream, the kind made with liquid nitrogen, topped with a dramatic honeycomb. It was visually striking in a way that nothing in Vancouver at the time matched. The market gap was obvious. Vancouver had the customer base for something experiential and photogenic, and nobody was doing it.

He brought in Brian, his future co-founder, with a simple pitch: neither of them had a restaurant background, but they were both doing fine in their current businesses, so why not start an ice cream shop together? Brian took time to think about it. Wilson gave him a week. Brian said yes, quit his banking job, and went in full speed.

What was the opening day actually like?

They aimed to open in July 2015 after starting in March of that year. On opening day the team was not ready. Staff told Wilson they could not open. He told them to use cups instead of proper bowls and open the doors anyway.

That decision changed everything. A blogger walked in that first day, photographed the ice cream, and shared it. Her friends and colleagues showed up. Those people posted on Instagram. Within the first week, the shop had a lineup out the door and a story spreading on social media without spending a dollar on advertising.

The lesson Wilson took from that day: you will never feel ready. Say yes, commit, and figure it out in real time.

How did they decide to franchise, and what did the professionals tell them?

Franchise requests came in almost immediately after opening. Wilson and Brian took that signal seriously and started consulting lawyers, accountants, and business consultants to understand what it would take to build a franchise system.

Every one of those professionals told them to slow down. Prove out the concept. You are still in your honeymoon phase. Wilson heard all of it and decided to prove them wrong. That defiance, combined with what the team called a “GSD” (get stuff done) mentality, pushed them to document every process in the shop so the concept could be replicated.

The documentation work was a new category of challenge. Replicating a concept in a second location requires everything to be written down, trained, and systemized. They were building a franchise infrastructure while simultaneously running a busy shop with a line out the door every day.

What did the cash flow reality look like during rapid expansion?

This is the part nobody posts on Instagram.

Hiring an interior designer for a new location costs tens of thousands of dollars. Drafting a franchise agreement with a lawyer costs tens of thousands more. While 720 Sweets had customers lined up daily, the bank account was negative. The infrastructure spend was outpacing revenue.

Brian did not cash his own paychecks for over six months to keep enough cash flow in the business. Wilson and Brian consistently paid every staff member on time while skipping their own pay. That is the kind of decision that does not show up in the highlight reel but determines whether a business survives its growth phase.

Why did their first franchise location fail, and what did they learn?

This is the part of the story that hit hardest.

The first franchise they sold came close to going out of business. City permits, renovations, and all the operational complexity that comes with a new location piled up. Wilson and Brian had invested enormous effort into building that franchisee’s store, and it did not work. Wilson says it was the first time he had cried in years.

The failure forced a moment of brutal honesty. If the model was not fundamentally sound, selling more franchises would not fix the problem. It would just spread the damage to more mom-and-pop investors who trusted them with their savings. They stopped selling franchises, went back to the consultants and lawyers they had dismissed earlier, and asked the real question: what is wrong, and how do we fix it?

That pivot changed everything. They started finding the right product-market fit by listening to what customers actually wanted rather than what the founders wanted to sell.

How did they expand internationally and land a collab that worked?

After rebuilding the model, they started getting interest from Beijing. Selling a franchise in Asia is a different negotiation. Wilson learned to stop being arrogant in those conversations and to tailor the offering to what investors in that market actually found attractive.

Part of that positioning involved brand collaborations. The team noticed that their existing products were not commanding the price point they needed in the Chinese market. The fix was partnering with brands that already had strong recognition in Asia. Venusaur, a well-known childhood Asian brand, became one of their best campaign partners. That collaboration drove significant sales across most of their stores and raised brand perception in a way that straight marketing could not.

They followed that with campaigns including an espresso brand partnership and a 4/20 campaign, each one building on the last. The Beijing franchise deal eventually closed, marking 720 Sweets’ expansion from a local Vancouver brand into an international one.

From there, opportunities in Australia, the Philippines, and Toronto started coming in.

Why did they choose acquisition over continuing to scale independently?

With opportunities multiplying and five years of hard-earned infrastructure behind them, Wilson and Brian had a real decision to make. They could keep building with their own resources, or they could bring in a more experienced group to take the brand to the scale they originally envisioned.

They chose the acquisition. The offer came right around the five-year mark, almost exactly March 2015 to March 2020. Their original goal had been 100 stores in five years. They did not hit 100 stores. But they built a strong enough foundation that an acquirer believed in the brand’s ability to get there.

Wilson is clear that missing the 100-store goal does not mean they failed. They built an international brand, got acquired, and created something durable enough for someone else to scale. That is a different outcome than the original vision, and still a legitimate win.

What made the team the real asset?

Wilson is direct about this: 720 Sweets was a team sport, not a solo act.

Brian’s financial sacrifice during the cash-drought years kept the company alive. The operations staff who scrambled daily, ran to the corner store for supplies, and worked through a power outage with no electricity, they made the machine run. The Edmonton team flew out together to open that location and celebrate as a group.

And then there was Wilson’s wife, who supported the business and him personally through the full five years, including a wedding and the birth of their daughter, all while 720 Sweets was demanding everything they had.

The “GSD” culture they built was not just a slogan. It was the actual operating system of the company: when you hit a problem you cannot solve, you try something, improve it, and try again.

The bottom line

You do not need industry experience to build a food business that gets acquired. You need a co-founder you trust with your life, the honesty to stop selling something before you know it works, and the willingness to pay your team before you pay yourself. The original goal was 100 stores. The result was an international brand sold to a buyer with the resources to take it further. As Wilson puts it: not hitting your goal does not mean you failed. Build something strong enough that someone else wants to finish the job.

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