Nothing about Will Gibson’s past prepared him to own an ice cream business.
He’s a former home theater salesman and a dedicated road cyclist. Gibson liked to eat ice cream but he’d never made it, much less sold it — not until he established Sweet Pearl’s Ice Cream, first from his home in Wylie and now inside a commercial kitchen in Garland.
Making ice cream might have saved his life, he says. For the second half of 2020, Gibson was bedridden following a life-threatening bicycling accident where he mistakenly pedaled into a bollard and landed on his head. He had a traumatic brain injury, despite wearing a helmet. He broke nine ribs and was hospitalized for three weeks.
“Doctors would say, ‘I don’t know what to do with you. I’ve only seen these kinds of injuries on a cadaver,’” he says.
Gibson has had three surgeries to repair his damaged ribs and shoulder. He continues to have spinal cord and shoulder pain. A year and a half after his injury, when he could find the strength to stand up, he started making ice cream in a KitchenAid mixer his sister bought him for Christmas in 2021.
His first challenge was to make a homemade version of Blue Bell’s Confetti Cake, his fiancée Natalie Bollen’s favorite.
And it was pretty good.
So Gibson started giving away ice cream to neighbors in Wylie. Then, they offered to pay him. Mint Oreos and pralines and cream were early favorites. So was the birthday cake ice cream, which has chunks of yellow cake with buttercream frosting that Gibson makes from scratch.
By February 2022, word got out in the neighborhood and he sold nearly 100 pints in a few hours.
Ice cream with a mission
Making ice cream gave Gibson a purpose amid physically challenging circumstances. It was also much-needed revenue source.
“I drained my savings,” he says, referring to the hospitalizations, surgeries and visits to the emergency room. “Credit card bills racked up. I sold my house and lived off of that.”
He tried to get jobs, first at a car dealership and then selling home theaters, but some days, he wasn’t able to get out of bed. On the worst ones, he’d even eat lying down.
“I didn’t want to give up or admit that I was disabled,” he says.
His ice cream business operates on his own terms. The countertop KitchenAid mixer is long gone; he uses two commercial-grade ice cream makers now. New employee Valentine Granados makes the ice cream and keeps the business running when Gibson can’t.
Gibson says the company is built on second chances. Granados was recently released from prison on an assault charge. Gibson found him through the Prison Entrepreneurship Program, a non-profit that mentors felons. On one of Granados’ first days on the job, he learned to make Peanut Butter Jelly Time, a glazed doughnut ice-cream mixed with chopped Nutter Butter cookies and Bonne Maman fruit preserves.
“I hope that one day I can help [Valentine] get to wherever he wants to go, whether that be go to school, go work for a master chef or even open his own bakery,” Gibson says.
Sweet Pearl’s is named after Gibson’s dog, Pearl, who needed a second chance, too. Gibson and Bollen say Pearl was abandoned near their neighborhood after she had puppies. She became another symbol as Gibson sought to restart his life.
For now, the ice cream is sold via pickup in Garland or by delivery across D-FW, including in Gibson’s Wylie neighborhood. Eventually, Gibson hopes his team can operate a food truck for birthday parties or other events. He may never open a traditional ice cream shop.
“I don’t think, physically, I could do that,” Gibson says.
“With this setup,” he says of the ghost kitchen, which doesn’t demand seven-days-a-week attention, “I can grow and expand. And make a difference in the lives of others.”
Sweet Pearl’s Ice Cream is made at Revolving Kitchen, 520 Shepherd Drive, Garland. It is available for online ordering and pickup. Orders can also be delivered by Gibson and his team, or via UberEats. sweetpearlsicecream.com.
