Tony LaVerde and Anthony Abdelsayed started Mashup Ice Cream in September last year. (Photo by Alex Dominguez)

DOWNEY - What if someone could tell your story, one scoop of ice cream at a time? Two of Downey’s up-and-coming entrepreneurs want to do just that.

Tony LaVerde and Anthony Abdelsayed, 24, are the minds behind Mashup Ice Cream Co., a new brand of ice cream established in September of 2022 that is focused on providing unique flavors while collaborating with other creators.

The duo met at Downey High School. While they started off as rivals, the two would establish a friendship and business partnership over time.

“We met in high school, became pretty good friends,” said LaVerde. “I left for college to New Jersey, but I would always come home in the summers, we’d talk very often. We always wanted to do something.”

LaVerde has a major sweet tooth, especially for ice cream (he even has an ice cream tattoo). Abdelsayed, not so much.

Still, ice cream fit a couple of important criteria for their business strategy.

“I’ve always thought of myself as a creative person, just artistically gifted. I’ve always thought business is just a really good canvas in the sense that, just problem solving and being creative, there’s a lot of fluidity and malleability,” said Abdelsayed. “What I was really looking for in any kind of business was first that it would be scalable - that it wasn’t just tied down to just me or a partner to really help grow it, it could grow exponentially – and the second thing that it was malleable and creative.

“It was really hard to find something that fit those two bills, that was something within grasp, within our skill set…After many different ideas, iterations, playing around with thought projects, we stumbled upon it, and we went back to ice cream with a new light, or perspective when we thought about it.”

Abdelsayed studied Business Administration with an emphasis in entrepreneurship at Cal State Fullerton, while LaVerde earned a Masters at Seton Hall University. Their entrepreneurial spirit goes much deeper, however, with both being the children of hard-working immigrants.

“I’ve got that school background, but I mean I’ve been around entrepreneurs my entire life,” said Abdelsayed. “My father immigrated from Egypt, and he started with his family mattress factory in Montebello…My dad was a huge influence on me, just with his business savvy as an immigrant who came to the states without knowing any English, learning English and Spanish and really started a really big company with his family.

“Aside from that, my other cousin Chris, he now has a mattress store where I currently work, he has two stores. He was a really big influence on me as well, kind of like an older brother. Just being around that in the family really set me up.”

“I’m also the child of immigrants who came to this country when they were teenagers, learned the language, started businesses,” added LaVerde. “My dad did, my uncle did, his brothers did. I think that is one of the many reasons why this partnership works so well, because we have sort of similar upbringings and a very similar mentality.”

You won’t find basic vanilla and chocolate from Mashup. Abdelsayed admits that Mashup doesn’t have the infrastructure to produce more classic flavors as cheaply and mass-produced and be able to compete with more well-known brands.

Instead, Mashup makes more unique flavors – like s’mores, guava cheesecake, and lemon cookie – to encourage consumers to “get out of their comfort zone.”

“Where we excel is to create out of the box ideas, and we’re just mashing up our tastes, our wants, stuff like that,” said Abdelsayed.

He adds that Mashup plans to also be a very “collaboration-heavy based business.”

“The Mashup we see is using ice cream to bridge two different industries, or two different audiences,” said LaVerde. “You don’t traditionally think of clothing or breweries when you think of ice cream, but if you can tell a story with someone who you love their ideas, you love the business they're doing, you just like what they’re doing in general, you can shine a light on that with our existing audience. We use the bridge of ice cream to do that.”

Mashup’s first collaboration was with Ballast Point Brewing Company, a take on the company’s Victory at Sea brew. Their next collaboration – with Pluto Sneakers on Instagram – is already in the works.

Up until now, LaVerde and Abdelsayed have been working on Mashup from out of their homes, in between working their full-time jobs. They’re hoping to soon take up a new residence renting space in a kitchen, however have no thoughts of opening up their own storefront.

“I think ice cream, not to get too convoluted, for better or worse, an industry that hasn’t really been disrupted, and I see mashup as something like an Uber, something like an AirBnB where you come into this industry, you completely disrupt it, owning absolutely nothing,” said LaVerde. “Mashup is a brand with a tangible product of ice cream, and we want to leverage our brand to be able to sell through ghost kitchens, to sell on DoorDash, without ever actually owning too much. The goal is to become as loved as some of the very regional ice cream shops that I love myself, but on a national level the way Ben and Jerry’s or Jeni’s [Splendid Ice Creams] is without owning anything.”

Mashup is eying a soft launch in a matter of a few weeks, with an official launch slated for this summer.

For more information visit mashupicecream.com, or their Instagram page at @mashupicecreamco.

New ice cream company tells stories through unique flavors