C3 (Creating Culinary Communities), a revolutionary food and beverage platform founded by Sam Nazarian, today announces a new partnership with global consumer goods company and the world’s largest ice cream maker Unilever to serve as one of its fulfillment partners for The Ice Cream Shop, a virtual ice cream store that offers top-selling ice cream and frozen novelty brands to consumers on-demand. C3 is now hosting The Ice Cream Shop from 17 locations across Los Angeles, Orange County, Oakland and Chicago with plans to expand the partnership to its network of digital kitchens nationwide throughout 2021.
Unilever’s The Ice Cream Shop launched in 2019 as a new way to order ice cream by utilizing major delivery platforms to deliver frozen treats to consumers. The Ice Cream Shop locations hosted by C3 offer delivery of popular Unilever ice cream brands via mainstream delivery platforms and C3’s proprietary delivery app, CitizensGO, when it launches later this year. C3 brand menus for Umami Burger, Krispy Rice and Sam’s Crispy Chicken now offer Ben & Jerry’s, Talenti, Magnum, Breyers, Klondike & Good Humor desserts.
“Our new partnership with Unilever underscores C3’s diversified business model and ability to create solutions across the food industry,” says Sam Nazarian, founder and CEO of C3. “C3 is proud to offer The Ice Cream Shop a seamless fulfillment process through our nationwide ghost kitchen network to match the growing demand for enjoying ice cream at home.”
The partnership comes at a time when ice cream sales continue to rise, a trend that escalated in 2020 with a major shift to online orders. According to data from Expert Market Research, the global ice cream market is forecasted to grow at a rate of 7.5 percent reaching $96.1 billion by 2026.
“The idea of ice cream delivery is still a fairly new concept. Many people don’t know that they are able to get ice cream delivered right to their door without it melting. We’re lucky to be able to continue to expand ice cream delivery with the help of our partners like C3,” says Rahul Shah, Head of Ice Cream Now, U.S. at Unilever. “Having C3 in our corner allows us to distribute Unilever ice cream brands across its impressive network of consumer markets.”
Forthcoming fulfillment locations for The Ice Cream Shop hosted by C3 include Berkeley, Minneapolis, Iowa City, Tempe, Richmond, Ann Arbor and Providence with plans for New York and San Francisco later in 2021.
Since launching just 19 months ago, C3 closed out 2020 with 200 digital kitchens, 15 brands, 12,000 employees and 1.1 million meals served. Just last month, C3 announced the debut of Graduate Food Halls in partnership with Graduate Hotels, which injects C3’s popular restaurant brands and shared kitchen model into the hotel space at graduate communities across the U.S. The C3 portfolio currently includes restaurant brands like Umami Burger, Krispy Rice, Sam’s Crispy Chicken, Plant Nation and EllaMia.C
