The owner of the vegan ice-cream shop, Luv Fats, always wanted to start a business, even when she was in middle school.
“I would go to Kenya and come back with little purses and try to sell them to my classmates,” said Chi Ndica, whose mother is Kenyan. “I would bake cookies and sell them to my friends and classmates.”
The Austin native told Black Austin Matters hosts Lisa B. Thompson and Richard J. Reddick that she comes by it naturally.
“My grandpa was an entrepreneur in Kenya. He had a hotel. He has an auto shop business,” Ndica said. “All my aunts have their own farms and sell their produce to friends and family members.”
Ndica started selling Luv Fats ice cream at farmers markets in 2018. She opened the iconic hot pink ice cream shop on North Lamar in 2022. The business is closed now while a new location in Northeast Austin is renovated and remodeled.
Ndica's propensity for running her own business may also be a reflection of her personality.
“I don't like being told what to do,” she said.
The road to Luv Fats
Ndica didn’t set out to be an ice-cream maker. In fact, there wasn't ice cream in her house growing up.
“My mom was a nutritionist, and so we had no snacks,” Ndics said. “If you wanted to eat anything, you had to make it from scratch.”
But it was different at her best friend Katie's house.
“They always had ice cream in the freezer," she said.
Katie’s dad would take her and her friends to the store and let them each get a treat.
“That was my first experience of having my own pint to myself,” Ndica said. “And it was just such an indulgent, memorable experience for me that I still think about. And I feel like that fueled my love for ice cream.”
Ndica started experimenting with making vegan ice cream after her mother developed a sudden skin allergy. No one could figure out what was causing it, so she had to cut out certain foods.
“The hardest thing for her to take out of her diet was the dairy,” Ndica said.
So Ndica started to search for ways to give her mother and herself a bit of joy — without the milk.
The problem was she didn't enjoy most vegan ice creams.
“I'm a really big textural eater,” Ndica said, “and they are too icy or they taste just like the milk that was used. Like you just taste almond milk, you taste no other flavor. So I was looking for other fats to incorporate into the ice cream. And one of my mom's favorite fruits is an avocado. She eats one like every single day. So I figured, let me add that, it's a good fat, and it pairs really well with coconut milk.”
Eventually, she settled on a mix of coconut milk, avocado, some cocoa butter and avocado oil to create the texture of Luv Fats ice cream.
The next chapter
Luv Fats has found a new home at 4700 Loyola Lane. Ndica says she is looking at a fall opening. While the new space is being renovated, she will be focusing on expanding the wholesale production side of the business.
Ndica set up a GoFundMe to help cover the costs of renovations at the new location and to support her employee during this transitional time.
“Although these last few months have been stressful and filled with uncertainties, we are hopeful that this will be a new chapter for luv fats where we can grow into the company we were meant to be," she wrote on the GoFundMe page.
