Van Leeuwen Ice Cream began as a single yellow ice cream truck in New York City with a simple idea: make the best ice cream possible using high-quality ingredients and nothing unnecessary. Since its founding, the brand has grown dramatically, evolving from a small, founder-led operation into a nationally recognized name in premium ice cream. Today, Van Leeuwen operates 103 corporate-owned scoop shops across the U.S., is sold in about 15,000 grocery stores, and continues to expand internationally. Supporting this rapid expansion behind the scenes has been Square, a technology partner that helped Van Leeuwen Ice Cream scale without adding unnecessary complexity. The company first began evaluating Square around 2014, when it was still in its early stages. “There were a few main reasons we chose Square,” says Ben Van Leeuwen, co-founder and CEO of Van Leeuwen Ice Cream. “First, I loved the simplicity of the interface—it was easy to set up and use. Second, I liked the flat processing fee. We didn’t have a real accounting or finance team back then, and trying to reconcile reports from traditional processes was painful. We’d see thousands of transactions with different percentages depending on the card type, and it was hard to tell if we were getting a fair deal. Square’s flat fee made things much clearer. Additionally, we needed capital. Square’s cash-flow-based lending was incredibly helpful, and I used it almost immediately to help build stores.” Before adopting Square, Van Leeuwen Ice Cream’s biggest issue was complexity. “Managing different processing fees…
