Rudolph wants 1,500 stores, each earning $500,000 a season.
When Jim Rudolph and his brother, Bill, bought Rita’s Water Ice in May 2005, they were stunned by the amount of attention they got.
‘You have to remember, I’m not from Philadelphia,’ said Jim Rudolph, now Rita’s chief executive officer. ‘I’m from Pittsburgh.’
Rudolph didn’t realize how popular Rita’s was in the Philadelphia region, where it had been founded in 1984 by a firefighter trying to supplement his income.
But McKnight Capital Partners - the Rudolph brothers’ investment firm - didn’t buy it for the strong Philadelphia connection. They bought it to expand far beyond the Mid-Atlantic region.
‘Who says this can’t travel?’ Rudolph retorts to skeptics who say that people outside the region have no idea what water ice is.
No comments yet.