Kettle Valley Memorial and the Penticton & Wine Country Chamber of Commerce are excited to give the scoop on this week’s Top 40 under 40 recipient.
Kelsey Hoy is the owner of Tickleberry’s, the beloved ice-cream shop that was started by her parents back in 1989. Embracing her family’s legacy of becoming the biggest supplier of scooped ice cream in Western Canada, Kelsey has expanded Tickleberry’s to three locations and has grown the staff from a compliment of five to more than 70 workers during the peak season.
To Kelsey, community is everything and makes decisions that are responsive to the community’s needs. For instance, 100 per cent of Tickleberry’s annual Christmas Shop Night ticket sales go to a select charity each year with last year’s funds donated to Mamas for Mamas, free ice cream cones were provided to firefighters during the wildfires, and they even donated sales to Ogo’s in Penticton when they were violently broken into back in 2021. Kelsey is also a very strong supporter of buying local first, including gourmet food and bath and body products for their retail area and supporting their staff’s side hustles of baking, jewelry making, and more.
From the staff’s perspective, many of them would say “Tickleberry’s is a pretty fun place to work, where you get free ice cream and they let teenagers be managers which is cool.” Kelsey ensures that her valued team members are always involved in the creation of new fudge and ice cream flavours, and during the summer, all of the staff get to participate in the ‘9 Weeks of Awesome’ initiative where the team can win weekly gift cards and be entered to win a big prize at the end of the year. It’s a great way to promote success and have fun. Tickleberry’s is also known for granting any time off request, no matter what time of year or for how long, understanding that things in life happen, and take the view that personal time is paramount to promoting creativity and brings the team together when they accommodate any kind of personal leave.
But Kelsey is not finished there. When she isn’t busy helping other young entrepreneurs or raising her family, she is working at making it possible to pay her year-round staff a living wage, and given her spirit and determination, we wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Tickleberry’s will be growing some more.