Maximilian Chillura, 29

It’s not often you hear children discussing gaps in the market. When Maximilian Chillura and his siblings visited his grandparents in Ohio as kids, there was an ice cream shop walking distance from the house that was touted as ‘the’ highlight of the visit. Upon returning home to Tampa the Chillura siblings longed to have the same amenity and even dreamed of franchising their own location.

“It was kind of childhood pipe dreams,” Chillura says. 

But was it really? 

Photo by Mark Wemple

Chillura — whose dad is prominent Tampa area banker Joseph Chillura and whose grandfather is former Hillsborough County commissioner Joe Chillura Jr. — grew into an adult and the dream of owning an ice cream shop never strayed far from his mind. He went to school for finance and got a job with a real estate developer. He lightly sketched out an ice cream business plan on the side, and then a lay off forced his hand. Instead of going back to real estate, he decided it was time for the dream he’d been carrying all this time to come to fruition. 

The dream became Chill Bros. Scoop Shop. The first location opened in 2019 and the business has since scaled to five locations with approximately 70 employees generating $3 million in annual revenue.

“We make a very traditional style of ice cream. It's a cremont gloss or a custard based ice cream, so you don't have any gums or stabilizers or any sort of manufactured kind of bulking agents that lessen the quality of the ice cream. Some of them can cause stomach irritations, but largely it's just a really simple, clean product. And then we put our champion spin on it,” Chillura says. 

Now that the dream is at full churn, Chillura’s mentor, Guy Campbell of GCF Ventures, is helping him strive for the next benchmarks. 

“[Guy] helped me to see past the startup phase and kind of the dreaming, creating the product phase and looking at actually implementing procedures that will allow us to grow and become more than just a one or two unit ice cream shop,” Chillura explains.

Part of that involves getting out there and making the next leap, much like he had to do to start Chill Bros. in the first place. “He got me out of my head. He’s a doer and he pushed me to push myself to not get caught in analysis paralysis and kind of start taking action.”

Chillura has advice for other young professionals out there: “Find what makes you tick and pursue it. Become an expert at it, do everything you can to learn as much as you can about it, and then just have a high pain tolerance and be able to persevere and not not give up at first blush.”

Laura Lyon