Van Leeuwen Ice Cream

Sicilian pistachios, Ceylon cinnamon, vanilla from Papua New Guinea: the ingredient list came before the shops did. Van Leeuwen started scooping from yellow trucks in New York City in 2008 and still reads best through what goes into the base.

From a yellow truck to a Greenpoint factory

Ben Van Leeuwen, his brother Pete and Laura O’Neill launched the company from converted post office trucks rather than a storefront. Ben’s route into it began in 2002, driving a Good Humor truck and learning how much ingredient quality changes a simple scoop; after travelling in East Asia and Europe he came back with a stricter recipe and tested it in a Greenpoint apartment, where the chocolate alone went through thirty-five versions. The founders built the brand around a purer base of cream, butter and egg yolks, with whole vanilla beans, barrel-aged vanilla, Ecuadorian chocolate and Sicilian pistachios doing the flavouring. The first scoop shop opened in Greenpoint in 2010, and a factory followed in 2012.

Street-level service, still

The company grew out of trucks, scoops, queues and direct exchange across a hatch, and that is still the shape of a visit: choose a flavour, get served, eat it there. The first outing was a street fair in Tribeca, where a Whole Foods buyer tasted the ice cream and had it in stores within months. Laura O’Neill has described the marketing as practical hospitality, make good ice cream and hire nice people to serve it, and Ben Van Leeuwen has stayed hands-on enough to keep scooping in the shops. As the company grew, the rooms picked up local detail: black walnut panelling in the East Village, an original design by the artist Jon Burgerman in Tribeca, and a neighbourhood flavour made there with Ron Silver of Bubby’s, strawberry rhubarb pie with the crumble of a crust running through it.

Start with Sicilian Pistachio

Sicilian Pistachio is the logical first order, since those pistachios anchor the founding ingredient story. The original truck menu carried ten flavours, Chocolate, Vanilla, Gianduja and Ginger among them, and the vanilla is still tied to whole beans and barrel ageing. Ceylon cinnamon and Ecuadorian chocolate belong to the same early vocabulary of specific, imported ingredients. From there the list turns playful: Kraft Mac and Cheese pints sold out fast in 2021, and other headline releases have included Hidden Valley Ranch, Grey Poupon mustard, a Keith Haring flavour of raspberry, passion fruit and strawberry jam, and a Sour Cherry Creamsicle made with Jean-Georges. Alongside the pistachio, Peanut Butter Marshmallow Crunch and Vegan Mint Chip show the range between nut-driven, candy-textured and plant-based scoops.