{"id":160193,"date":"2026-03-11T11:38:35","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T11:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/160193\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T11:38:35","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T11:38:35","slug":"ample-hills-founders-open-ramblin-chick-in-brooklyn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/160193\/","title":{"rendered":"Ample Hills Founders Open Ramblin\u2019 Chick in Brooklyn"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n Jackie Cuscuna and Brian Smith outside of their new shop, which opens to the public next week.
\n Photo: Courtesy of the subjects\n <\/p>\n

For Jackie Cuscuna, every trip to the grocery store is a reminder of her former life. \u201cI walk by the first Ample Hills<\/a> every day to go to the supermarket, and it hurts,\u201d she says. Cuscuna, the co-founder of that Brooklyn ice-cream company that she and her husband, Brian Smith, bankrupted once and lost twice, adds, \u201cIt doesn\u2019t go away, but the desire to do it again and to build a business again the right way, I think, is there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The couple is doing it again, starting over one more time. And they\u2019re betting the farm on chicken. Chicken burgers, specifically. Ramblin\u2019 Chick<\/a> opens next week in Carroll Gardens, and even the biggest fan of comeback stories will find its opening to be, at the very least, somewhat implausible.<\/p>\n

Like child actors forced to grow up on camera, Cuscuna and Smith became national figures while they were still bootstrapped first-time business owners. Ample Hills, which they launched as a single Vanderbilt Avenue storefront in 2011, simply took off on the strength of flavors like Snap Mallow Pop and Ooey Gooey Butter Cake. By 2015, they were signed on for Disney collaborations \u2014 official Star Wars flavors and a Disney World shop \u2014 and Oprah Winfrey had said publicly she could polish off a pint of Ample Hills ice cream in a single sitting.<\/p>\n

Cuscuna and Smith took on outside investment and grew too fast<\/a>. \u201cWe didn\u2019t fail because people stopped liking the ice cream,\u201d Smith says. Where he came up short was on the math. They built a $7 million factory and had to keep growing in order to pay for it, but they didn\u2019t have the capital to open more stores. \u201cAll the 15 shops were profitable, but the factory\u2019s drag on the 15 shops was so great and so immediate that we declared bankruptcy,\u201d Smith says. Cutting costs wasn\u2019t an option, either, because they needed to grow. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t close the factory because it was the only way we had to make ice cream,\u201d Smith explains. \u201cThe only way to do it was to immediately build ten more shops, but the investors didn\u2019t have ten-shops-more money.\u201d (They also made some avoidable mistakes, like insisting on packing ice cream into square-shaped pints called squints that were more difficult to fill and transport.)<\/p>\n

In 2020, the couple sold Ample Hills<\/a> to an Oregon-based manufacturing company called Schmitt Industries for just $1 million and, a few months later, declared personal bankruptcy. Then, they dusted themselves off and in 2021 opened a new shop, the Social in Prospect Heights. Sales were sluggish, but they chugged along until learning that four of the Ample Hills outposts in New York City were back on the market, including the original on Vanderbilt Avenue.<\/p>\n

In what looked like triumphant and poetic justice, the couple purchased their former shops back in 2023, along with the rights to their recipes and to Ample Hills\u2019 social-media account. For a moment, they\u2019d reclaimed ownership of the brand they\u2019d built. But within six months, the investors who\u2019d backed them on the deal fired the duo from their business; Smith and Cuscuna later claimed<\/a> they hadn\u2019t hired a lawyer to look over the details of the arrangement. \u201cI beat myself up a lot,\u201d Cuscuna says. \u201cI felt like I did everything wrong. I mean, it was torture. I\u2019m still going through it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not only that the loss continues to haunt them; it\u2019s as if they\u2019ve been compelled by a force greater than themselves to keep restarting until they get it right. They also need to dig themselves out of a financial hole. \u201cEven though Ample Hills had grown to a certain place, we still held many personal guarantees,\u201d Smith says. \u201cWe still have debt from the personal bankruptcy.\u201d So here they are with Ramblin\u2019 Chick, a business that aims to marry America\u2019s love of chicken and burgers, whose mascot is a cartoon hen, a wanderer of the land, blue guitar strapped to her shoulder, red boots on her feet. She\u2019s a stand-in for Woody Guthrie and the communal spirit of folk music. Understandably, investors were hesitant and needed assurance that, as Smith says, \u201cwe were up for a smaller growth plan or more focus on profitability \u2014 all of the things that we knew we needed to do.\u201d They managed to find a few backers who believed in what they\u2019d initially built with Ample Hills.<\/p>\n

One thing that has not changed since the Ample Hills days is Smith\u2019s boundless faith in his product-development skills. He believes he\u2019s struck gold again with his chicken burgers \u2014 seasoned, marinated patties that inspired the shop\u2019s slogan: \u201cIn search of the great American burger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Each of Ramblin\u2019s five different Cracklin\u2019 Chicken Smash Burgers is a double-patty production on a Martin\u2019s potato roll. The OG BK is piled with caramelized onions, American cheese, and Smith\u2019s Secret Ramblin\u2019 Sauce (his version of comeback sauce). There\u2019s a chicken Caesar in burger form (like a wrap, but not); a Buffalo-wing-adjacent stacker; a chicken-and-waffles tower with no buns; and finally, a chicken-chili burger. You can also get the chili over the skin-on fries, or those can be ordered with molten cheddar or a magic dust made with crispy chicken skin.<\/p>\n

There are nuggets, modeled after the McDonald\u2019s ideal \u2014 \u201cSomething that resonated in your mythic imagination,\u201d Smith says, but \u201cmade with real ingredients\u201d \u2014 and Ooey Gooey Mac & Cheese, a triple-cheese affair crowned with a crumble of potato chips and pretzels. The name is an intentional throwback to Oprah\u2019s favorite Ample Hills flavor, and it\u2019s not the only reference point. Late last week, Smith was testing a batch of vanilla soft serve. Yes, they\u2019re doing ice cream again, and Smith is going hard on soda-fountain-style drinks. He\u2019s got shakes and he\u2019s got floats, and he\u2019s seeing just how far he can take them. \u201cWe have a banana-pudding milkshake I\u2019m trying to work on where we\u2019ll pur\u00e9e bananas and vanilla wafers into the milkshake,\u201d he says. The soft serve is a certified home run: as rich and dense as anything made with custard. \u201cI mean, there\u2019s just no way that we couldn\u2019t do ice cream,\u201d says Cuscuna.<\/p>\n

Beyond the ice cream, the real detail that unites this new venture with Ample Hills is the couple\u2019s apparent belief in some kind of higher calling. The ice-cream shop took its name from a line in a Walt Whitman poem. Ramblin\u2019 Chick was inspired by \u201cThis Land Is Your Land.\u201d \u201cI know we\u2019re just a chicken-burger place,\u201d Smith says. \u201cThat song is really provocative and really progressive, and yet it\u2019s something that every kid grows up still knowing \u2014 it\u2019s also tied in with the whole history of the American hamburger as being a food of the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

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