Behind the 400% year-over-year growth of Frutero ice cream are a pair of Wharton School graduates, freshly imported tropical fruit, and nostalgia.
Frutero founders Mike Weber and Vedant Saboo met on the first day of class in their MBA program at the University of Pennsylvania, when they were fortuitously assigned seats next to each other in their first of many entrepreneurship classes. Within months, the duo knew they wanted to start a company together.
They settled on the idea behind Frutero, sparked by a trip Weber took to Saboo’s home country of India, after nearly 80 other business concepts did not fit their vision.
Now in 3,000 stores along the East Coast, Frutero has plans to expand its geographic reach and is in talks with "most major retailers" about carrying the brand, the founders say.
Weber said the company's first big breaks came in 2020, when Frutero secured placement with delivery startup Gopuff and in Philadelphia-area Whole Foods markets. By the end of that year, the brand was selling in 30 stores. By the end of 2021, it had reached New York and Virginia in 450 locations. The ice cream is now carried by Stop & Shop, Giant, Acme, Food Lion and other grocery retailers.
The Frutero flavors, some familiar like coconut and mango and some uncommon for the American market like guanabana and guava, were inspired by the Indian-style ice cream Weber tried on his trip and Saboo remembers from his childhood. When they looked for the flavors back in Philadelphia, they couldn’t find them.
Product development began in Saboo’s West Philadelphia apartment in 2019, with help from his mother in India, who made her own batches of the ice cream at home to send instructions and feedback. Some of the essential fruits were difficult to get in the city, Saboo said, particularly guava, which they could only find at Reading Terminal Market, and guanabana, found at H Mart.
The pair’s Wharton classmates served as some of the first taste-testers. “We realized the ice cream didn’t just have Indian appeal,” Weber said. “People who grew up in Latin America and Southeast Asia know the fruits, as well as millions of people who travel and get to know the flavors.”
“Frutero is really all about connecting people back to those tropical memories through the fruits,” he said.
The first large manufacturing run, handled by now-closed Little Baby’s Ice Cream in North Kensington, cost the pair $150,000, a cost they split and fronted on their own. “The risk paid off,” Weber said, as that first run sold out and quickly led to a second.
Frutero sold 1.5 million units of ice cream in the most recent fiscal year, the company's third in operation. The previous year, it sold just over 300,000 units, up from less than 40,000 in its first year.
“We had about 12 customers when we started,” Weber said, “but we knew there was something there.”
The founders attribute their success in part to attracting customers who are not typically ice cream buyers. According to the pair, their customer-level data, supplied by retail analytics platform Catalina, indicates that nearly a third of their customer base does not buy other ice creams, but rather purchase fresh and frozen fruits and juices. Almost another third of customers do typically buy other ice creams, and are now buying Frutero in addition to, not in place of, their other picks.
“We say tasting is believing,” Weber said.
Since their first self-financed run, the founders have received investments from others in the food and beverage world. They raised $500,000 in 2021 and $3 million in 2022 from investors including RXBar co-founder Jared Smith, president of Whole Earth Brands Rishi Daing, and Bioharvest CEO Ilan Sobel.
The founders have plans to add additional investors with experience in the industry to their roster, but declined to disclose specific capital goals.
Weber and Saboo now live in Miami, but all operations — from R&D to manufacturing to legal — remain in Philadelphia and the surrounding areas. The dairy ingredients used in Frutero continue to come from the Lancaster-based Pioneer Cooperative, primarily supplied by Amish and Mennonite farms.
Frutero’s co-packing partner, whom the company has worked with for two years, is also Pennsylvania-based.
The company will expand its reach to Texas next month and plans to increase Frutero's presence in all its current markets in 2023. Walmart, Kroger, and Publix are next on Frutero's list of targets for retail partnerships, the founders said.
The duo is looking for other ways to "connect their customers to the tropics." In the future, they expect to expand their Frutero's flavors into other food categories, including snacks and beverages.
