Kid-owned company lands deal with Look’s Marketplace

By Courtney Collen for Pigeon605.

A business entirely owned by kids is now selling its product at Look’s Marketplace.

Carroll Street Treats, which is based in Rock Rapids, Iowa, brands itself as a “for-purpose ministry” business serving ice cream sandwiches across the Upper Midwest, which now includes South Dakota.

“When our oldest son, Reece, was 8 years old, he wanted to sell something out in front of our house but not the typical lemonade stand,” mom Meredith Vander Zee explained. “He decided on homemade ice cream sandwiches.”

The Vander Zee siblings: Evan, 4; Nora, 8; Blake, 11; Ayda, 13; Liam, 14; and Reece, 17

Eight years and a few more kids later, Carroll Street Treats has grown and expanded into new markets.

Reece Vander Zee, president and chief baking officer, has produced more than 50,000 sandwiches to date.

The company became wholesale certified with a commercial kitchen in 2020.

It truly is a family-owned and operated business, and each of the Vander Zee children has a job, from finance to customer relations, freezer and inventory management to marketing and more.

“The kids own all of it and run most of it with our help,” Vander Zee said. “It has been so much fun to watch them grow with the company.”

Even the youngest, Evan, is tasked with cleaning the ice cream pails and setting them in a designated location where they are available for people in the community to take home and use as desired.

Each treat consists of homemade cookies and Iowa-based Blue Bunny Ice Cream in a variety of flavors.

“They’re so simple but so good,” Vander Zee said.

The top-selling flavors include cookies and cream, gluten-free monster cookie, snickerdoodle salted caramel and chocolate chip with various flavors of ice cream.

They range in cost between $3 and $5 in many of theretail stores.

Look’s Marketplace is one of 15 partnerships where customers can find a variety of flavors.

“We’re so excited to serve the customers of South Dakota,” Vander Zee said.

In fact, their entry into South Dakota is a full-circle moment for the Vander Zee family, who has a prior connection to Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken.

As the company was still in its earliest years, the family reached out to TenHaken, who was then founder and CEO of Click Rain, requesting insight into his passion for entrepreneurship.

“He sent us back the coolest e-mail that we read as a family,” she laughed.

That email from July 2017 reads in part:

“I have failed more times as an entrepreneur than I have succeeded, but those few successes make you more willing to take risks. … Like anything in life, you get better and more comfortable the more you do it. For me, the more risks I have taken the more comfortable I am taking them.”

The company’s latest Facebook announcement about the Look’s partnership included this shoutout to TenHaken:

“@Paul TenHaken – Remember that crew of kid entrepreneurs who you encouraged with your wise words a few years ago? They are in your city. Boom.”

Finding a healthy balance of school and sports activities, the Vander Zees are proud to teach all six children the value of hard work, leadership and philanthropy. 

“This is a very faith-based business,” Vander Zee said. “By using the gifts God has given us, we are able to give back in cool ways too.”

The kids have paid it forward more than a dozen times by funding various projects in the community to benefit public recreational trails, playground equipment and supplies for the local child care center.

“We want to instill in them that the funds are ours to bless and grow goodness in this world.”