In this 2022 photo provided by 50 Licks, three scoops of vegan coconut lemon saffron tower temptingly in the sun.
Courtesy 50 Licks
Chad Draizin of Portland’s 50 Licks sold his first scoop of ice cream in 2009 at a street fair. After several years of pop-up events and selling to local grocery stores, he opened his first brick-and-mortar shop in 2013 in the Clinton Street neighborhood.
But it was in 2017 that Draizin says his business transformed with the opening of the E. Burnside & 28th location - on a busy corner near dozens of restaurants and a movie theater right across the street. Business boomed, and he was able to open another location in Northwest. That’s why the fire in May 2024, which consumed the inside of the historic building, was so devastating. But Draizin managed to keep the other stores going and create a pop-up location at Washington Square Mall.
He joins us to share what recovery over the last year has looked like, and his hopes for getting back into his dream location on Burnside.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Chad Draizin sold his first scoop of ice cream in 2009 at a Portland street fair. Four years later, his company Fifty Licks opened its first brick and mortar shop on S.E. Clinton Street. Then in 2017, Draizin was able to open up another scoop shop at what had long been a dream location, the bustling corner of E. Burnside and 28th. Business boomed, until a year ago when a fire ripped through the historic building.
Chad Draizin joins us now to talk about the aftermath of that fire and the help from the community that has gotten him through. It’s great to have you on the show.
Chad Draizin: It’s a pleasure to be here.
Miller: My understanding is that you came to Portland to make beer. How did you end up making ice cream?
Draizin: I went to brewing school shortly after college and I settled in Portland at an internship here. I worked a little bit at Portland Brewing Company. I learned that while I love brewing beer at home, I didn’t really like it as a career. I took a little bit of time off, spent some time with family and realized I wanted to get back into something that used my food science knowledge, used my creativity.
I wanted to get back in the food scene and frankly, I saw that there just wasn’t an ice cream company in Portland that was capturing people’s imagination. I saw the opening in the market. I’d made ice cream half a dozen times at home, for fun, for dinner parties. And I thought, let’s do it and I just jumped right in.
Miller: Was there something physically about ice cream making that appealed to you more than brewing or was it more about the business side of those two worlds? I mean, it had been serious enough, brewing, for you to go to school for it, to get this internship, to come here to do it. I’m curious what it was about the making of it that you decided you wanted to leave behind?
Draizin: I think it was more about the shape of the career. Careers that are very attractive to people, a lot of people want to do those jobs. So they don’t pay very much because of supply and demand. Also, just the actual act of working at a brewery, you’re making the same beer over and over every day. If you want to make creative decisions, you have to own the company. And the path to owning a brewery is expensive, it’s long. I didn’t know how to get there from where I was.
Miller: And ice cream seemed like a more nimble food business for you?
Draizin: I don’t know. My father had just passed away and I was at a crossroads in my life of what I wanted to do next. I saw the opening. And I honestly thought I would do this for two or three years, but here we are 16, 17 years later and I’m still doing it.
Miller: You started with an ice cream cart, which was successful enough that you were able to open up your first brick and mortar shop, as I mentioned, in Southeast on Clinton. How was business at that first shop at the beginning?
Draizin: Oh boy, it was tough. It was really tough. When I signed the lease at that location, there was a bustling restaurant community. Within a block of us, there were multiple restaurants. There was Vindalho, the Indian restaurant, etc. By the time I actually finished building the shop and opened the doors, all of those restaurants were closed for various reasons. St. Jack was next door to us. They had moved up to N.W. 23rd. And we were really the only light on in the neighborhood.
Miller: Just bad luck … ?
Draizin: Just bad timing. The other thing that was tough with the timing was it took a while to get the place designed and built. I missed the bulk of our first summer. I had spent a bunch of money building the place out, and then we entered the winter slow season without any gas in the tank and on a dead street with nobody around. But over the years we were there … That first year, I was the person behind the counter scooping most of the ice cream. Over time, we started getting more notoriety, more foot traffic. And over time, that location kind of was able to stand on its feet.
Miller: Can you give us a sense for just how important in Portland the drier and warmer months, now hotter months of summer, are for an ice cream shop?
Draizin: Oh yeah, absolutely. When I talk about this, people always say, “Oh, I eat more ice cream in the winter than I do in the summer.” But my bank account will show that that is not the case.
Miller: Maybe they’re just buying it at a grocery store and then having it cuddled up under a blanket in February, watching the rain, as opposed to going to a scoop shop.
Draizin: Yeah, right, exactly. Netflix on the TV and winter under a blanket is how it goes. Coming to Fifty Licks is an experience. People come here for the ice cream, but you can get great ice cream at the grocery store. I think our ice cream is the best, but you can get great ice cream at the grocery store. But people go to an ice cream shop to be with their friends. They’re on a date. They’re out seeing a movie. They’re out to dinner. We get most of our business in the evening, for the after-dinner crowd, for people who just want to extend their night. We get families on bike rides that are driving through and we’re kind of the destination at the end of a long bike ride.
Miller: So on some drizzly February evening, like a Tuesday that’s 38 degrees and raining, how many people might come into one of your shops?
Draizin: Oh, it’s slow. I mean, sales drop around 85% from the busy season to the rainy season. We actually lose money in the winter. And people passing by, especially the busy Burnside shop, thought that we must be the most successful company in town. We were doing really well, but we have to stack that cash up so that we can survive the rainy, cold winter. We have overhead of our production kitchen, our production team, rents in the shops, loans for all the equipment we have to purchase, etc. And all that overhead continues, regardless of how much ice cream we sell.
Miller: Is there any idea of just having a different business model in the cold months? So [sell] your ice cream when it’s hot out, there’s foot traffic and a kind of summer joy. And then, I don’t even know, I’m not a business person. But I mean, what you’re describing is a really topsy-turvy business if, for half the year, you’re losing money and then you just rake it in for a couple months. Is there any thought of changing the business model in the winter?
Draizin: You know, my mom suggested, “I had a grilled cheese at a restaurant and they served it with tomato soup, and that would be so easy for you to add to your ice cream shops. It would give people something warm in the winter.”
Miller: As you’re saying this, it’s funny because it’s a mom’s advice. I can see why the idea is Fifty Licks equals ice cream. Fifty Licks in February, if it equals tomato soup and grilled cheese, what’s your brand?
Draizin: Right. People have only so much space in their brain to understand who you are.
Miller: OK, but what about this warm dessert that doesn’t involve tomato soup?
Draizin: You know what we’ve tried … If you take a scoop of any flavor of our ice cream, you could start with chocolate, but take a scoop of any flavor of ice cream, mix it 50/50 with milk, heat it up on the stovetop and it’s the best hot chocolate you’ll ever have, or the best hot vanilla, or the best hot toasted milk, or the best hot soy sauce caramel you’ve ever had.
Miller: This is my kid. For years he would say, “I like ice cream except I just don’t like that it’s cold. So can you please put it in the microwave?” I thought he invented this.
Draizin: Marketing that, selling that to people, getting people to understand this new thing that they’ve never heard of before, is a big challenge. And marketing is probably my weakest suit for all of the things running this company.
Miller: What do you mean by that?
Draizin: I don’t know. I’m on the tail end of Generation X and we don’t like hyping ourselves. When we see hype, especially the social media hype, we tend to turn away and feel like it’s false. We don’t like being manipulated, so doing that myself while I’m trying to run the business … it’s always like, I want to take photos for Instagram but I’m in the middle of it. I’m scooping ice cream. I’m solving problems. I’m coaching people. I’m making connections. And to take out the phone and do a little talking into the camera, saying, “here we are, at the place,” just is the last thing on my mind. It’s just not a skill I have.
Miller: So let’s turn to the shop on Burnside that had the fire. Why was this a place, a block, that you really coveted?
Draizin: Oh, I’d said for years that if this spot ever becomes available, I want it. It’s going to change the company. And one day I was driving by with my wife. I saw, “Oh, it’s for rent.” I said, “Can you write the number down?” And she said, “No, you’re going to pull over right now and you’re gonna call this number.” Within an hour I had a lease in my hand and I knew we had to take it.
The Laurelhurst Theater is directly across the street. So when people finish a movie, they have several screens over there. Every time a movie comes out, we have an influx of customers. There must be over 20 restaurants within a two-block walk of the ice cream shop. There’s the New Seasons diagonal, you’ve got Paadee and Langbaan within the building across the street – prominent, well-known, world famous or nationally famous restaurants.
There’s such residential neighborhoods there. When I was building up the shop, I was up on a ladder outside painting the sign that said “Fifty Licks.” I got texted by everyone I’ve ever met in my life [who] said that they drove by and saw me up on the ladder. So that location is just so prominent, everybody has to pass by 28th and Burnside at some point in their week in Portland.
Miller: So all of that was what you had been thinking were reasons that it would be a good location for an ice cream shop. Were you right?
Draizin: April 28, 2017, we opened the doors. It was an immediate overwhelming success. It was such that we had lines sneaking through the restaurant, out the door, down past the vintage shop next door, almost down to Holman’s Tavern. It was so overwhelming that I had to jump in and figure out how to run a business that was going from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset. I had to buy new equipment, I had to hire new staff. I had to figure out how to train people for this new model that we were working under. It was a real shake up.
Miller: You had to ramp up overall production because otherwise you didn’t have enough ice cream to sell?
Draizin: Absolutely. I bought a delivery van. I had to double our equipment that we had in the kitchen. I had to hire more people at every level, management, everything. And I had to learn how to run a successful business because I didn’t have the experience running a restaurant before. I’m a food science nerd. That’s kind of where my passion lies. So this was a whole new, exciting experience. It was a real pivotal moment.
Miller: And then a year-and-a-bit ago, there was a fire. How did you first find out there was a problem?
Draizin: I got a call from my alarm company that the alarm was ringing. I checked the cameras and the cameras were dead. So something was going on over there. I hopped in my car. While I was driving, I got a call from the landlord and she told me that there was a fire in the basement of the building, underneath the hair salon, next door to us. So I raced over. I saw probably two or three dozen emergency vehicles blocking streets for several blocks around.
I walked up to the building and I saw that my front door was open. There was a fan blowing smoke out and everything appeared to be OK. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing because I was expecting destruction, with all those vehicles there. I went up to a firefighter and asked him, “What’s going on?” And he said, “Oh, we have it contained. It’s underneath the hair salon next door, but we have the fire out and it should be OK.” I said, “Really it should be OK? You think I could open in a month or two?” And he said, “Oh, I think you could reopen tomorrow.”
There’s something emotional about a fire. It’s a primal, powerful force. And I just felt this sense of relief. I started crying and he asked me to step away, across the street, so they could do their work. And I realized, oh no, if the place is going to be OK, the power is out. I need to rescue the ice cream. So I left. I called some of the people on my team. We came back with the van to save the ice cream. And when I returned, the firefighters were inside my space and my space was destroyed.
The fire in the basement had reignited. It traveled up through the walls, the space between the walls, and it just took out the interior. There were firefighters spraying everything with water. They had pikes and were pulling sections of the ceiling down. There was a visible fire in the walls, smoke everywhere. They were actually having a lot of fun and they were very helpful in helping me rescue the ice cream from the freezers and bucket-brigading it outside. They were having the time of their lives.
Miller: So you still did go in to get the ice cream?
Draizin: While the place was burning, the firefighters were helping me get the ice cream out of the freezer.
Miller: We should say that there are apartments above there and all the people, obviously, which is way more important than saving buckets of ice cream, nobody was injured in this fire as I understand?
Draizin: Can I take a moment to tell a story of how the people were saved? The day of the fire, I met this young woman, Mackenzie, who lived upstairs. She told me that she heard some strange noises early in the morning. She looked out the window and she saw flames coming up in the alleyway. She went into the hallway. There’s five apartments upstairs. She knocked on doors. She woke everybody up. By the time she had everybody up, she couldn’t see your hand in front of her face. There was smoke all through the hallway. She escaped, but she left her two cats inside. Another one of the residents ran in, grabbed her cats, everybody was safe.
I want everybody to know that like that young woman is a hero. She saved lives that morning. I wound up giving her some assistance, navigating her renter’s insurance, because I checked in with her the next day and she still didn’t have a place to stay. No one from her insurance company was contacting her. So it’s just one of these things that we all kind of experienced this horrible thing together, so we just had to watch each other’s back and help each other out.
Miller: What did you hear from your landlord in the immediate aftermath of the fire?
Draizin: She was trying to navigate the situation, as we were, talking to insurance, talking to the fire department. Not a lot of certainty about how to move forward and we’re still in that process. I don’t have possession of the space yet. She is still working with all the engineering, the permitting, the insurance company, etc., to get the building ready for us to then take it over and do our build out. It’s a long process. It’s really challenging. I think most customers expected that we would be back open again in a few months. And there’s just so much involved in rehabilitating a building that was destroyed and damaged to that nature.
Miller: So when you realized, no, you’re not gonna open tomorrow, you’re not gonna open in a couple of weeks, it was, at this point, still indefinite. What went through your mind? And this was, as you said, the engine that turned a struggling business into a successful one. So what were your thoughts about how to move forward?
Draizin: I didn’t know. So in the first two days, my goal was to gather as much information about what options we had in front of us, and see which of those options were going to be the easiest to execute and the easiest to execute quickly. The fire happened on the first warm weekend last May. And we were expecting that revenue. I mentioned before that we need that summertime revenue to make it through the winter and suddenly we lost a summer at our busiest location. It is responsible for more than half of the business’s revenue.
Miller: How many people depended on your business for their jobs?
Draizin: Probably, at that point, we had around 30 employees. No, we had probably 35 employees at that point. And the first thought actually was, how do we keep these people employed, so that they could pay their rent, so that they can buy food and they can live their lives?
The auto body shop that’s directly next door to us was so generous. They allowed us to park our catering truck in front of their space for free as long as we wanted. So in those early days, I had my staff that were scheduled to work in the shop, work in that truck, basically just so that they could get hours in because they were already on the schedule.
The day of the fire, I did a number of television news interviews. And a regular customer, Aaron Mullins from Bridgeport Village Mall reached out. He said, “I am a regular customer at your Burnside location. I saw you on the news. We have a spot in front of the movie theater at Bridgeport Village if you want to put your truck there.” I said, “Oh, that’s amazing, but you know my truck is booked for various catering events, so I could be there sometimes.” He said, “We need you all the time. Can you build a new truck in a hurry and put it in front of the theater?” And I said, “Yes I can.’
I bought a used 1989 emergency rescue vehicle. All of the contractors that build out food carts were booked for a year. And I found this amazing man, William Gott, on Instagram. He normally builds van life conversions. But he knows how to do the plumbing, he knows how to do the electrical. He’s an amazing cabinet builder and he built out the interior, in my driveway at home, so fast on this new truck. We got it pushed through the county health department and we were in place operating in front of Bridgeport Village in less than two months. It took a lot of work. It took a lot of work and it was just amazing. I was so grateful for that opportunity there.
Miller: What do you feel like you’ve learned from this experience?
Draizin: I think it’s a real exercise in resilience. When emergencies happen, you’ve got to get real calm. You’ve got to slow down. You gotta put your eyes on the horizon of where you want to go. You’ve got to be able to sort through those opportunities calmly, quickly, without the emotion. And you’ve got to look out for everybody around you. You’ve got to look out for your team. You’ve got to look out for the people that were also affected by the situation.
And it was through community, through the help of the auto body shop, through the help of Rose City Guitar [and] the amazing women who run that place. They were a guitar school and a guitar shop, next door to the ice cream shop. They invited us to use that as a little temporary headquarters, the living room. Just that kind of kindness. I wanted to make sure that the kindness that I was receiving, that I was also paying it forward and putting that out to everyone else who was involved.
Miller: Do you have any idea when you could reopen on Burnside?
Draizin: We get this question multiple times a day. I truly don’t know. The last I spoke to Chris, who’s the landlord over there, she was in the process of working with the insurance company. But she doesn’t really have an answer. So I suspect it’s probably … Hopefully, we can make it in time for summer 2026. But it might be summer 2027.
Miller: Chad, thanks so much.
Draizin: It’s been such a pleasure, Dave. Thank you.
Miller: That’s Chad Draizin. He is the owner of Fifty Licks Ice Cream.
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