Meet Camille & Julian Haynes | Owners, Scoop Craft Creamery

We had the good fortune of connecting with Camille & Julian Haynes and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Camille & Julian, what inspires you?
This is a difficult question to answer because we’ve been inspired by so many different people, places and things over the years. We’re firm believers that one can draw inspiration from anybody or anything. But we’ll take a crack at naming our top 3 sources of inspiration during our journey to entrepreneurship.

1. Family & Friends: We have parents, siblings and many others who have showed unwavering support throughout our lives and also served as inspiration to take that giant leap into entrepreneurship. Between the two of us we have parents who have immigrated from Germany and Trinidad & Tobago, and parents who were born and raised in the U.S. but had to fight for respect and opportunity as children and teenagers through a challenging civil rights era. We have sisters who are pilots, pharmacists and students looking to make an impact in this world. We have other family and friends who are military vets, physicians, lawyers, educators, restaurant and retail workers, and all other types of professions that help keep our economy running the way that it does. We’re inspired on the daily by our circle who is grinding to be the best version of themselves.

2. Travel: Long before we knew that we’d start an ice cream business we drew inspiration from coffee shops, breweries, restaurants, and unique and forward thinking concepts like a shipping container shopping center we stumbled upon in London back in the day. Many of the memories we have and pictures that we took during our travels found their way on to Scoop’s business plan and helped make our business into what it is today. We’ve been very fortunate to travel and still have several countries we’d like to visit asap because much like life, businesses adapt and change so any worldly influence and inspiration we can incorporate is important to us.

3. Impact: More than anything we’re inspired by the impact that we can make in our communities, specifically the customers we serve, the organizations we have the ability to support and the employees who dedicate their time and efforts to the business.

What should our readers know about your business?
At Scoop we specialize in homemade ice cream and ice cream creations like our Cereal Ice Cream Bar, Ice Cream Nachos and Donut Ice Cream Sandwich to name a few. What’s most important to us is creating a comfortable, chill and safe environment underpinned by a lineup of great products. We’re excited about our second location opening in Spring Branch in late 2022 / early 2023.

While we’ve had our challenges due to the pandemic, supply chain restrictions, hurricanes and freezes we put our heads down and find solutions to those challenges in order to push forward. We’ve made our fair share of mistakes as well, but we make an effort to learn from them the first time and not make those same mistakes twice. Being agile and adapting is an important part of our business.

We believe that our backgrounds in oil & gas sales and nutrition really prepared us to run the business that we run today. As we reflect on the earliest days there are certain things that seemingly fell into place, but there was also a LOT of time invested into planning, research and development, etc.

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?
We could make an extremely long list but we’ll limit the list to: a walk or run at Buffalo Bayou Park, concert at White Oak Music Hall, catch a game at Toyota Center, NRG or Minute Maid, açaí bowls at Earthcraft and Citizens Truck, coffee at Inspira, Java Owl and Brass Tacks, date night at Traveler’s Table, BBQ at Pinkerton’s, fajitas at El Tiempo, pastor killa-dillas with lean sauce at Gordo Nino’s, Hangar Kitchen for burgers, Xin Chao and Nobi Public House for Vietnamese, Loro for a semi-formal counter service vibe, donuts and fritters at Riley’s Donuts and Bonnie’s Donut, HEB supreme thin crust pizza at home, Squable for happy hour, cocktails at Rosewater and Anvil, and brewery hop at SpindleTap (and coffee!), No Label, True Anomaly, Buffalo Bayou Brewing, Urban South and Saloon Door.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
We’d like to give a shoutout to all of the educators who helped us get to where we are. All of our teachers, guidance counselors, administrators and coaches at University of Houston, Clear Lake High School, Howard University, Meade Senior High School (Maryland) and many others who poured into us during our early childhood years. We’d also like to give a shoutout to our mentors during our professional careers in dietetics and oil & gas. Their guidance and support gave us the tools and confidence to get a little better every day.

Website: www.scoophtx.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/scoopcraftcreamery

Facebook: www.facebook.com/scoopcraftcreamery

Image Credits
HiFi Marketing Agency (overhead shot of employees working and cereal ice cream bar pictures) Nathaniel Jones (Treat Yourself picture)