Jumpstart Magazine July/August 2014 | Page 16

14 JUMPSTART JUMPSTART HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU TO LAUNCH YOUR BUSINESS? It took a good 6-8 months to get the business off the ground, as we carefully explored all of our options. Once we determined that we would start off modestly, and not dive directly into having a retail establishment, it took about 3 months to build our ice pops factory in order to obtain our frozen confection manufacturer license. TELL US ABOUT THE MANUFACTURING PROCESS A Healthy & Natural Treat INTERVIEW WITH LOLA’S ICE POPS WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO CREATE LOLA’S ICE POPS? Everything that goes into our ice pops is fresh and natural. We don’t use powdered mixes, artificial flavours, colouring, chemicals or preservatives. So that actually makes our manufacturing process quite simple. If we are making a “Watermelon Basil” ice pop, we blend up fresh watermelon and basil, then pour the mixture into popsicle molds and place them in our high-speed freezing machine. Although the process is simple, it can be very time consuming since we make everything from scratch. For example, we make our own brownies in our “Chocolate Fudge with Brownie Bites” popsicle, and hand-make the caramel in our “Green Apple Salted Caramel” popsicle. It’s a lot of work to make everything by hand and from scratch, but we think it’s worth it. Lola’s Ice Pops was founded by two friends - Sandra Wong (originally from New York) and Julie Tuan (originally from San Francisco). Sandra and I were both working as lawyers when we moved to Hong )-