Every Monday at 9:55 a.m., Sadboy Creamery sends out a text alerting in-the-know ice cream lovers that it’s time for them to clamor to their nearest device in hopes of scoring a few of the several hundred pints the team will release that week. Inevitably, by 10:05, all 600 to 700 of the small-batch flavors will have been scooped up for scheduled pickup times a few days later.
It’s a mad dash that might only work for the most ice-cream-focused fans, but so far, that has been enough to sustain the business for Sadboy founders and married couple Michael Kimball and Austin Walker.
“It takes a little more effort to get it, but a lot more effort has been put into it,” said Kimball, the flavor mastermind behind the Denver company, noting that each batch takes a minimum of three days to produce.
“The fact that itap hard to get sort of adds to the lore,” adds Walker, who handles social media, marketing and financing.
Still, Kimball is adamant that his goal wasn’t to create manufactured scarcity with Sadboy. He and a team of five other equally devoted chefs work long hours to concoct the weekly batches from a commissary kitchen on Federal Boulevard. They include flavors like Cookie Butter Pecan, made with brown sugar ice cream, brown butter pecans, and cookie butter magic shell; Black Bottom Banana Bread, made with caramelized bananas, banana bread blondies studded with walnuts and bittersweet fudgy brownies (or what Kimball calls “frownies”; and Dirty Earl, made with Earl Grey ice cream, a splash of amaretto and Oreos.
“We all care about making the best ice cream in the Milky Way,” he said. “Itap non-pretentious flavors made pretentiously.”
But Kimball and Walker recently made plans to boost manufacturing and ease distribution, the latter of which currently takes place only during a few specific hours from a window above City, O’ City, at 1280 Sherman St., by signing a lease for a storefront nearby. (They didn’t want to reveal the location yet, although it is nearby.) Staying in the which runs along Colfax Avenue in Capitol Hill, was important to them, Walker added.
Unlike most ice cream parlors, this “will be a pint shop, not a scoop shop,” said Kimball, meaning people won’t be able to buy cones, but Sadboy may be able to supply some walk-in stock. They hope to open it this summer.
Aside from the exclusivity, part of the appeal also comes from great marketing and the personalities of the sad boys themselves, who embrace the image of the lonely pint, eaten as a pick-me-up during depressing moments in life.
“People have really resonated with the Sadboy brand. This is ice cream to eat in a dark room after a breakup,” said Walker.
Kimball, a Seattle native, also walks the walk. He loves the rain, his favorite color is blue, and a “sadboy” playlist consistently fuels the fire when he’s crafting a new flavor. “A lot of people resonate with Michael because he is very authentic,” Walker said.
A graduate of Boulder’s Escoffier School of Culinary Arts, Kimball started the company in 2023 after toying with ways to turn his background in food science and recipe development into a viable product. The concept hit while he was listening to a playlist of sad songs, he explained. ” And I knew I wanted to make ice cream for my fellow sadboys.”
At the end of the day, though, itap the ice cream itself that accounts for the nearly 75% return customers. Kimball said he constructs his flavors using his own labor-intensive process that draws from techniques from across the frozen delight universe.
“The lines between custard, ice cream and gelato are kinda fuzzy anyway,” he said, noting that classic preparations are joined by things like egg yolks and the use of gelato machines. Nostalgia also plays a big role. The ornate recipes favored by some of Sadboy’s artisan competitors are scrapped in favor of blends that are succinct and evocative.
Flavors change each week, with new items often taking up the majority of production. But Sadboy, despite its penchant for melancholy, is not here to deny the people what they want. Fan favorites cycle back through the rotation week to week. If Pompona vanilla bean happens to be on the menu, do yourself a favor and buy it by the boatful.
