The headquarters for Sweet + Simple Creamery is spartan — a cafeteria kitchen in a former Farmington elementary school — but the ingredients lining the shelves are anything but: organic sugar, locally produced honey and chocolate, and a full gallon of “Royal Brand Bourbon” vanilla extract from a brand well-known to pastry chefs. “We don’t have any artificial colors or artificial flavors, and almost everything is locally sourced,” said Coleman Warren, a wiry, high-energy industrial engineering junior who started this company on a shoestring and a dream during a global pandemic. He’s most proud of his Taylor 220 batch freezer: “Brand new, these are $28,000,” he said, and they’re essential to would-be ice cream entrepreneurs, he had learned. “I had just got off the phone with a guy and I was feeling discouraged,” he recalled. Warren logged onto eBay, and “literally one had been listed an hour ago — I bought it then and there, for $10,000.” 

Serendipity, along with generous help from friends old and new, has supported Warren’s quest to launch an ice cream company with a mission: to raise money for local kids living with food insecurity. A summer volunteering for AmeriCorps VISTA in Omaha, Nebraska, inspired the idea. 

There, he encountered not one but three premium ice cream shops that had lines out the door every day. But the hungry children he met there had the greatest impact. Warren remembers one day when he was playing tag and Frisbee with several children after lunch had been served at their apartment, run by the Housing Authority. 

“The food truck pulled away, and one of the kids, Giovanni, said, ‘I’m still hungry – can we go to the church?’” So Warren marched a small army of kids down the street to the food pantry at the church, where they were turned away; regulations required that the children be accompanied by a legal guardian. 

“You guys are just going to have to come back with your mom or your dad,” Warren told them, “and Giovanni was like, ‘My mom would never get off the couch to do that for me.’” Warren realized that “if these kids are hungry and also their parents are so exhausted just trying to make it by, how can they focus on the things I’ve had the luxury of focusing on?” 

Warren looked at the numbers on food insecurity and realized Nebraska’s not even in the bottom 20, in terms of food insecurity. But Arkansas is. 

The idea of selling ice cream to help hungry kids came to Warren while he was sitting in a probabilities and statistics course in Bell Engineering. He floated the idea by more and more friends, and began to assemble his team: 

• Bailee King, his girlfriend, signed on as creative director. 
• Tanner Green, a friend from high school who is active in local startups, came on board, bringing $20,000 with him from an anonymous investor. 
• Professor Karl Schubert connected Warren with Mary Beth Brooks, director of the Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center. 
• Angela Oxford, director of the university’s Volunteer Action Center, suggested he look up Neil McWilliams, owner of “The Spring Dipper” ice cream shop in tiny Mammoth Springs, Arkansas, and former president of the National Ice Cream Retailers Association.  

Warren cold-called McWilliams, gave him his elevator pitch, and was met with a healthy dose of skepticism and a long checklist of things to consider, from health department approval to costly equipment. In the end, McWilliams allowed Warren’s team to make 36 gallons of ice cream at his shop. That initial offering sold out in 24 hours when they launched on Shopify in April 2020. In April 2021 Sweet + Simple Creamery took the top prize in the Arkansas Governor’s Cup competition, small business category, adding $15,000 in prize money that moves them that much closer to a food truck, which would cut packaging and delivery costs and raise profit margins.  

To date, Warren has donated $1,800 to the Northwest Arkansas Food Bank, providing 15,000 meals for hungry kids, and he hopes to donate $100,000 within three years’ time. Customers might purchase the first time to support a good cause, but they come back because the ice cream is great. The secret sauce, Warren said, is butter fat: “We use 14% butter fat. To be ice cream, technically, you have to have 10%.” Warren also credits the fact that they make just four gallons at a time, ensuring small crystals: “It’s a really small batch, and with ice cream, it’s all about crystal size; small crystals make creamy ice cream.” 

Warren’s team also gets creative with the flavors. There’s the tried-and-true vanilla, chocolate, butter pecan, and their bestseller, cookies and cream. And then there are the more experimental flavors, such as honey lavender, chai tea, and a “black and white” that swirls together white chocolate and fresh raspberries. Seasonal offerings have included eggnog and cinnamon roll ice creams in winter, and rose, chocolate-covered strawberry, and crème brulee flavors for Valentine’s Day. “It’s fun to experiment, but we have to be selective,” Warren said. “There’s only so much freezer storage, only so much time.” 

Between classes and a full plate of extracurricular activities –– Warren is a Rhodes Scholar, a Truman Scholar and serves as president of the Associated Student Government this year – time may be the biggest challenge. But Warren makes time for Simple + Sweet on nights and weekends, because “donating meals is great, but the most important thing is people being aware that there are hungry kids in Northwest Arkansas, and there are way too many of them.”  

Ultimately Warren plans to pursue a master’s degree in public policy, with an eye towards a career in public service. “What I really care about is making Arkansas a more equitable place for everyone, and figuring out the core issues that are leading to symptoms like child hunger.”