Scooping Up Success
As a little girl, Taylor Cook’s dream was to own an ice cream business. “I just loved ice cream so much,” Cook recalls. “It was no more complicated than that.”
As a sophomore at Anderson County High School in Kentucky, Cook also dreamed of running for FFA office, so she needed an active Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE).
“I wanted my SAE to be meaningful to me,” Cook says. “I started thinking about my dream to have an ice cream business.”
At 15, Cook pitched the sweet idea to her parents. She suggested outfitting a trailer to sell ice cream at public events. Her father, John, an FFA alumnus, understood the impact of a rich SAE. Mom, Amanda, needed the list of ingredients on what made a great SAE. Her parents loaned Cook the money to purchase a trailer, which John helped outfit. “He said I needed to learn all the things, so we did the electrical, I put in the floor, the walls, which took about a year working on the weekends when he could teach me,” Cook says.
Taylor also learned how to make ice cream with help from Carl and Debra Chaney of Chaney’s Dairy Barn, who actively support and mentor local FFA chapters in the Bowling Green area. With her new trailer, her hand-crafted ice cream and the help of four family members, Cook took Taylor Belle’s Ice Cream to her first event in downtown Frankfort.
“I was so nervous beforehand, but we were busy the whole night,” Cook says. “That’s when I realized, even that night, my dream had come true.”
We’re All Screaming for Taylor Belle’s Ice Cream
Taylor Cook is Taylor Belle’s Ice Cream founder and CEO.
Today, Taylor Belle’s Ice Cream has four mobile units and provides all the hand-dipped ice cream in the dining halls at the University of Kentucky (UK) and at UK’s major sporting events. Taylor Belle’s also provides ice cream, including soft serve, for all events at Rupp Arena in Lexington. They also provide ice cream for Transylvania University and Baptist Health Lexington, and sell the craft ice cream at mom-and-pop stores throughout Kentucky.
The loan from Taylor’s parents? It was paid back within months, almost before the first batch of ice cream could melt. The business was so successful early on that John quit his job and came to work for her as the chief operations officer. Amanda is the chief financial officer. Taylor’s younger sister, Annabelle, (the “Belle” in Taylor Belle’s Ice Cream) now owns and operates Taylor Belle’s & Burgers, a restaurant in Lawrenceburg offering smash burgers, fries, nachos and other fun foods, plus Taylor Belle’s 31 flavors of ice cream. Annabelle also operates two food trucks.
The hand-dipped ice cream is made at a production facility in Frankfort. “We have about 40 employees,” says Cook, who is CEO of Taylor Belle’s.
And the SAE that started it all? Cook scooped up a top-three finish in Kentucky FFA Association’s State Star Award for her SAE. She also won a state proficiency award for food science and technology in 2018, and for agricultural processing the next year. With a sweet SAE in her toolkit, she ran for chapter office and served as the Anderson County FFA chapter president.
‘Chase Your Big Dreams’
Now 26, Taylor says her greatest takeaway from FFA was improved public speaking skills. “I used to be very nervous to talk in front of people, especially a crowd,” she says. “FFA really brought me out of that shell, and now it’s nothing to talk in front of people. But I would not have had that confidence to go into meetings when I was 16 or 17 years old with people a lot older than me and pitch my ice cream business if I didn’t have the FFA experience. I don’t think I would have wanted to go into those rooms at all. It would have been so much more nerve-racking.”
Taylor says she never thought making and selling ice cream would be her career, even though it was her childhood dream. “I thought it would be a side hustle through high school,” she says. “I planned to be a cardiologist, but after high school, I got my associate’s degree and then I had to decide. My family and friends noticed I was excited about becoming a doctor, but my passion was ice cream. They said it was my calling.”
The entrepreneur changed her major and earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Eastern Kentucky University. As Taylor Belle’s celebrates its 10th anniversary, Cook offers current FFA students this advice: “Go outside of the box,” she says. “SAE projects can be just about anything, and when you let your mind go outside what you think it should be, that’s when our brains come up with all sorts of ideas. Everybody has big dreams. Don’t be afraid to chase them. I did, and I wouldn’t be here today without doing that.”
