Rising Stars: Meet Hannah Russell of Nashville Area

Today we’d like to introduce you to Hannah Russell

Hannah, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Building a family-founded food brand was a desire that began to grow in our hearts and minds since leaving behind our hotels and resorts careers over 8 years ago. My husband Jason, is and has been a professional chef for over 20 years. My career has been mainly marketing and branding, specifically in the consumer packaged goods industry. We’d had side businesses and tried our fair share of startups while still maintaining our full-time positions over the years but nothing we started felt like it could scale. We moved to the Nashville area in 2020 just before covid. We were in our new city but the world was shut down. Restaurants weren’t open but ice cream shops were. We were out having ice cream when we had a thought that even when the world feels like it’s crashing and burning we can still find some delight in treating ourselves. We began to see that ice cream could scale. And after I was laid off, twice in the next 2 years, it became clear that it was time to focus on building out this idea that just might work. It isn’t that we’re so passionate about ice cream. It’s that we’re passionate about the ways ice cream brings people together and pours more delight in the day. Soft serve became the focus when I went to ice cream school at Penn State in 2023 and since I’m not a chef, it was the only concept I could understand and relate to. I realized I enjoyed soft serve more than traditional ice cream and not just because the concept of it was less technical, it was because it was fresher product. It’s frozen right in front of you! And let’s all be honest, soft serve is a lost treasure! Not to mention, we both love to SERVE. And we like to say, “life is hard, ice cream shouldn’t be”. It was like it was waiting for us all this time.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I would say it’s not been a completely smooth road, we’ve definitely had lots of setbacks. What I will say, is that the CALL WAS CLEAR. We knew that ice cream was where we were meant to make our mark and when you know you are where you’re supposed to be, it makes tackling hard situations a little easier. One of our biggest challenges is with supply chain and startup equipment. We bought used equipment to keep the entry cost down but we’ve had issue after issue with our ice cream machine. It’s frustrating for sure, but it has required us to become innovative in our offerings and versatile in how we generate revenue. We’ve added on new offerings such as a cart service, ready-made ice cream novelties, and craft sodas.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
We make dairy-free soft serve. Our ice cream flavors are unique and you won’t be able to find them anywhere else. We try to match feelings to flavors. With signatures like “sunshine” and “salt air” – we are de-commoditizing ice cream. Not to mention the experience we offer when we make an ice cream for a customer. It’s a show! We use natural things to color our ice cream to make it bright and vibrant, we add toppings you wouldn’t normally expect like olive oil and salted sprinkles, and glitter is ALWAYS FREE! Dairy-free is something we’ve learned that more people are seeking out over traditional full-dairy ice cream and we use gluten-free oat milk as our base so there’s not a compromise in flavor or texture.

We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
HUGE RISK TAKERS and obnoxious optimists!! That’s us in a nutshell. We are generally optimistic and have a big appetite for risk. While we are more responsible than reckless with risk, we know who we are. If the risk doesn’t pay off immediately, we’re creative enough to figure something out that will. This frame of thinking has lended to our favor for the most part but we’ve also had our fair share of mistakes. A major risk we took was on purchasing a 1967 vintage truck. We are at its mercy to deliver what we contract with the client. We have found ourselves in the ditch with a blown transmission and had to miss two events we had booked that same day! It was a risky decision to purchase a cute little piece of iconic American history but the alternative was a sprinter van that is more reliable but wouldn’t have booked as many gigs because it isn’t the look many of our clients are going for a their events.

Pricing:

• Private Events start at $900 and includes custom flavors and colors
• Public events our treats average about $8

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.bealightbox.com
• Instagram: @lightboxnash
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61552480623677