You might not think of the sweet and squishy world of ice cream as a likely frontier of entrepreneurship, but Paul Ballen’s business refutes that stereotype emphatically. Ballen (28) is the founder and inspiration behind Paul’s Homemade Ice Cream — a business that now has four stores of its own, and immense plans to coat the country in sticky goodness. He always had a passion for food. As a child he spent summers in New York, where his father, Roger Ballen, was from. There is a multitude of ice-cream brands and options in the US, which is probably why it is second only to New Zealand, with each American eating, on average, 20.8l of ice cream per year. In contrast, SA was stuck in the dark ages until recently. "Things are different now to 10 years ago when we couldn’t get a good pastry. I used to go to the US and wonder why the SA range was so abysmal. When I walked down any ice-cream aisle in SA there was only Ola, Nestlé and Country Fresh. I was trying to understand why there was t...
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