Super-cold ice cream coming to Fort Collins

FORT COLLINS — He’s got the idea. He’s got the equipment. He’s got a five-year lease on the space. Now all Kenny Haap needs is a contractor to help him build out a really cool sweet spot in Fort Collins.

Haap, with 30 years of experience in the hospitality industry but declaring he’s “tired of working for The Man,” wants to open a Sub Zero Nitrogen Ice Cream shop at 1501 W. Elizabeth St. near the Colorado State University campus.

That Campus West location will be the 20-year-old Provo, Utah-based chain’s 27th store, and the concept is part culinary art and part science lesson, thanks to Sub Zero founders Jerry and Naomi Hancock. With a background in chemistry, Jerry Hancock developed a method to freeze ice cream using nothing other than liquid nitrogen. He and wife Naomi patented the two-minute process that takes liquid cream and drops its temperature to 321 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Customers can watch it happen, complete with a cloud of fog.

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The Hancocks opened their first store in 2004, took the concept to “Shark Tank” in 2013, and built a franchise.

Haap, a Cal Poly-Pomona graduate who had worked in operations and management at various golf courses and restaurants, caught the Sub Zero bug when he met an owner of one of the franchises while he was working at Monarch Beach Golf Links in Dana Point, California. “He purchased a bottle of booze to put into his ice cream,” Haap said. “So I’d go to his store once a week.”

Family needs brought Haap to Colorado. “I had just gotten awarded full custody of my son, and my mom was in California helping me raise him,” Haap said. “But she had ties to Loveland and wanted to spend her last days out here, so we moved here eight years ago. She was a 23-year heart transplantee. Our goal was 25 years, but COVID took her away.”

Haap managed food and beverage service at Highland Meadows Golf Course in Windsor and Boomerang Links Golf Course in Greeley, the Fort Collins Country Club and TPC Colorado in Berthoud — but owning a Sub Zero franchise still appealed to him.

“I kept my eye on them, reached out to Sub Zero, got all their franchising info and pulled the trigger,” Haap said.

It’s an expensive trigger. To develop a new store, Sub Zero requires an initial franchise fee of $35,000, verifiable liquid assets of $100,000 and a total net worth of $250,000.

Haap is excited for what customers will see in his new shop when his 500-liter liquid nitrogen tank produces a frozen treat. “They’ll be able to touch and feel the evaporation from the talk and eat some science after,” he said.

In the meantime, he has portable 30- and 50-liter Dewar tanks he uses for catering events such as weddings and performing science demonstrations to school groups. He’ll be selling Sub Zero gtreats on July 26 at an ice cream festival in Loveland.

“A lot of these events, I’m just donating my time and energy to get the marketing out there,” Haap said. “We’re doing Facebook and Instagram and all that stuff. But I had a billboard on County Road 5 to advertise ‘the coolest ice cream in town’ — and someone stole it. It was an 11-by-8-foot structure and they took the whole thing out of the ground. Six months later, nobody seems to know where a 90-square-foot sign went.”

Haap hopes to be able to laugh about it all once the store opens.

Customers first will pick a base — original cream or a reduced-fat, vegan or sugar-free foundation. Next they can choose among more than 35 flavors and create their own combinations. Then they can choose mix-ins such as candy, nuts or fruit. Finally, they can watch it freeze through what the company calls a “wonder of science.”

“We’re not any Casa Bonita with drivers jumping into water,” Haap said, “but you can see ice cream go from liquid form to solid form. You’ll still get a show with it.

“And we’re going to try to do this without breaking people’s wallets, too,” he said. “We want to give back to the community and show them we don’t have to charge $10 a scoop.”