Meet Jackie Luu | Stuffed Ice Cream Owner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jackie Luu and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jackie, how has your work-life balance changed over time?
Starting and running a business is definitely no easy task and it takes a lot of time. In the beginning, I was at the store for 2 years, 7 days a week. However, the goal is of course to find a way to balance out the free time you get and I feel like thats only possible with something of your own. Nowadays, my total work week hours might add up to around 20 hours, although that may be split with a few hours all 7 days of the week sometimes. I’m always thinking about work wherever I am and basically is on-call but it does give me the time I want to spend with my loved ones, which i’ll cherish over working any day of my life. But don’t get me wrong, I one hundred percent believe that any business will thrive more with more time and effort the owner puts in, but thats just not my priority. I honestly love the balance I get right now.

What should our readers know about your business?
Stuffed Ice Cream was started in 2017 with me and one of my bestfriends, Alan Yaung. We’ve been really close friends for over a decade before opening Stuffed, which made it very easy to work with as we’d have great chemistry together and that just made everything easier. Our whole brand basically wraps around us in a nutshell. We like to have fun, and do outrageous things like throwing ice cream around, or playing with our food and ended up with ice cream bouquets. The birth of the bouquets weren’t for us to “increase sales” or anything, but instead just a day where we were in store and I was just wondering if I could have fit all 12 flavors we had at the time in one cone. Realizing it was easier than I thought, when we added more flavors, we just added more scoops on the cone and found out that around 18, thats when the cone has a high chance of cracking because of the weight.

What i’m personally most proud of, is all the opportunities we’ve got with the brand, With all the media coverage, being on countless news channels, NYC taxi ads, Food Network Food and Wine festival, to an episode of Food Network’s Man V Food. Growing up, my mom always watched food network and being a part of that definitely marked a milestone I never thought was possible.

Getting to where we are today was no easy task, but a lot was for sure lucky. Persistent in the beginning really paid off when we were emailing any media to cover us and luckily it just snowballed from there. A big lesson i’ve learned was to trust the people around you, as one person can only do so much.

All I want people to know is that we make some darn good ice cream and life is too short to not enjoy the sweet things it has to offer.
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Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
For sure take the NYC ferry around! You can’t get better than a $3 trip around NYC by water passing under 2 iconic bridges, the brooklyn bridge and manhattan bridge! I’d definitely visit Otis, they have the BEST burrata ever. Pizza at Strombolis for a classic NY slice. Brooklyn bridge park and Gantry State Plaza for some beautiful city skyline views. And honestly just walking around the city to see all the weird things and jaw dropping moments that happen in NYC on a daily basis.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My dad has definitely been the biggest support and mentor that has brought me to where I am today. I take after a lot of his personality traits and he’s been a business owner for over 30 years in Chinatown, NYC where he had a seafood and fresh produce supermarket. He taught me the in’s and out’s of running a business, the ethics, and most importantly the mindset I should have. Even though he is retired now, he still comes out to checks on my stores and give me pointers from time to time.

Website: https://www.stuffedicecreamnyc.com

Instagram: @stuffedicecreamnyc