Van Leeuwen, America’s fastest-growing dessert chain, is looking to expand abroad
The boutique ice cream chain is looking to open at least 300 new shops in South Korea over the next decade.
What started as a small ice cream truck on the streets of New York City in 2008 has now evolved into a scoop empire with over 100 store locations across California, Texas, Colorado, and Florida — and Van Leeuwen is now beginning to look beyond the US. The company signed a rare franchise agreement to open at least 300 new ice cream shops in South Korea over the next decade, starting with five store openings in the new market for this year.
For the boutique scoop shop chain where ice cream lovers can choose from more than 100 flavors, including some eyebrow-raising limited-time specials like Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, expanding its footprint has become a top priority, per a recent Bloomberg interview with CEO and cofounder Ben Van Leeuwen.
Indeed, the company’s impressive expansion in its home country, having nearly quadrupled its store count in the four years up to 2025, is helping it scoop more revenue to add to its top line. In 2024, Van Leeuwen’s sales had grown 39% year on year to $65 million, per estimates from food service industry tracker Technomics, while the parlor chain also ranked as the fastest-growing dessert concept from the top 500 American restaurants tracked by Technomics last year.
It’s also found success tapping into retail channels like Walmart and Whole Foods, selling pints of its speciality ice cream to 12,000 grocery stores as of the end of last year — up from just 100 stores in 2018.
Sundae scaries
Zooming out, there might be another reason that Van Leeuwen is putting more stock in reaching new overseas markets, with a previously attempted experiment in Singapore and now in Korea: Americans might well be falling out of love with ice cream.
Per the US Department of Agriculture, per-capita ice cream consumption has been on a downward trend for decades, dropping 34% as of 2024 since the USDA started collecting data in 1975. South Korea, on the other hand, has seen domestic ice cream sales and imports rebound in recent years, according to the department’s Foreign Agricultural Service Report.
