1851 Franchise spoke to Alston about her personal history with cryotherapy and how she built the brand to where it is today. 

1851 Franchise: Tell us about the history and founding of Icebox Cryotherapy. 

Alia Alston, Founder and CEO of Icebox Cryotherapy: When I was 19, an unfortunate drunk driving accident left me with neck and back injuries. Over time though, the effects of it began to sink in - fast forward a decade later, and my whole body pain was getting worse – especially on my left side where pinched nerves were causing numbness. So rather than giving up and living with pain or immediately going for surgery which would have been very invasive and diminished my mobility, I gave myself three months to try whatever non-invasive treatments were available first.  

My stepdad, a chiropractor in Florida, introduced me to an advanced technology called whole-body cryotherapy. This revolutionary treatment was only available at select professional locations such as Nike and the Mavericks basketball team - but I had the chance to experience it myself. Despite my initial skepticism that this cold treatment would make any difference, after five sessions of whole-body cryotherapy, all inflammation responsible for my numbness and pain was reduced almost instantaneously. The incredible effects of this ice bath on steroids gave me life-changing relief.

The machine is about $100,000, and unfortunately, my husband wouldn’t let me buy it and put it in my garage, so I decided to open up the first retail cryotherapy company in the country. I have a retail, marketing, and product development background, so it wasn't too offbeat for me—but it was definitely a leap of faith. I opened up my first location 11 years ago and really targeted the athletic community at first. I was persistent and contacted organizations like the NFL Falcons football team and Georgia Tech University to let me show them this amazing technology. I was lucky enough to actually work with the Falcons for four years during their training camps and help Georgia Tech be the first college in the country to utilize this technology in their facilities. Those contacts really helped the start of Icebox’s growth. At the time, I had one location and worked with athletes but also regular people like you and I walk in. The business really morphed into a community-centric pain management, wellness and athletic recovery studio. 

I always knew I wanted to have more than one location. I started Icebox on the whole premise that we were going to replicate this 100 times. It was around 3 years before I opened up my second location and seven years before I opened the fist franchise location. Franchising Icebox  was a way for me to find people that were just as passionate as I was to serve their communities. A very quick four years later, we are now at 34 sold locations with 18 currently opened.

1851: What void does Icebox fill? What was missing in this space before?

Alston: There were no real self-help type of boutique studios out there at the time, and there really wasn't anything innovative or technology-driven. In addition to whole body cryotherapy, there were so many really cool modalities that were starting to come out in the medical and professional market like hyperbaric, laser and infrared. But back then, there really wasn't anywhere that you could go in a retail public environment and get these amazing services that were being offered. For me, I had been dealing with pain management for the majority of my life. I really wanted to be able to offer my community a way to heal themselves without taking pills or living in pain. Whole body cryotherapy does that in three minutes, so you can be in and out of an Icebox in 12 minutes. I designed Icebox for the busy professional, mom, student athlete that couldn’t commit to an hour therapy service. I wanted Icebox to be an easy thing for people to fit into their hectic lives. 

1851: What are you doing well right now? What are your brand differentiators?

Alston: Icebox is accomplishing what we started 11 years ago as the first brick-and-mortar cryotherapy studio in the country. Each studio lovingly dedicates themselves to providing an enriching escape that instantly assists with pain management, overall wellness and skin health. What a meaningful mission we are all on to serve our communities.

One thing we do well is our culture. When someone steps into an Icebox studio, it just feels good. There's a strong culture that starts from the top, and here at the home office, that permeates throughout the company. We're big on servicing our community and making sure it's a personal interaction. We're just not processing people. We're actually building relationships and trying to understand exactly why they're coming in and how we can help them. 

We do the small things. We stand up when a guest walks in the door. We call guests by their first name. We want to make them feel like it's a family. All of these little things feed into the bigger picture and make a difference. We want to make the three minutes that they're in the machine and the 12 minutes they might be in our studio the best part of their day. 

1851: What are your growth goals?

Alston: Our big goal is to be able to serve communities throughout the country. You can’t do whole body cryotherapy at home properly, so we want to make sure we're accessible. And this includes pricing. We can get people in and out super quick so it doesn’t disrupt their day. We've grown organically these last four years, and now we're really looking to put some muscle behind our story and our brand so that we can reach the masses.

1851: What were some learning opportunities that Icebox has leveraged over the years to get to where it is now? 

Alston: We’ve learned that one of the biggest things that drives success is our passion. All of our rockstar studios are extremely passionate about what they're doing and the “why” behind what they're doing. I'm also really lucky to have people on our team that come with franchise backgrounds with big companies like European Wax Center, Orange Theory and Massage Envy. So, even as a young franchise concept, we've been able to pull best practices from some of the giants. 

1851: What are some of the brand’s important milestones over the past five years?

Alston: One big milestone was getting franchise operations started right around the COVID-19 pandemic. It was really tough, but we still sold and opened quite a lot of franchises during 2020 and 2021. However, it was a challenge to get these studios cashflow positive within their few few months — something that is important to us. So, we worked really hard and found creative ways to get the word out there. Since then, we’ve grown in memberships every month and our retention is at an astonishing 90%, while our NPS is 95. These have been really big wins for us and are a testament to how well our team is doing. 

1851: What does your ideal franchisee look like in terms of how they run their business, what personal traits they have, what prior business experience they can claim, etc.?

Alston: We've got rockstar franchisees that come from all different walks of life. I think the one common denominator for extremely successful locations is a franchisee that can manage their manager appropriately and build a team. We would rather our franchisees not be in the studio working behind the desk. We would rather them manage their manager that comes from the membership world and has experience in building teams. We really look to the franchisee to be the face of Icebox, to be out in the community and growing awareness while the managers actually work the day-to-day of the studio. 

We love families. We love corporate refugees. We love multi-units. We're really focusing more on multi-unit franchisees lately, and especially ones that have experience in opening up multiple locations and managing teams to do that. That really helps us with scale and success because they've done it before. Many of our franchisees were actually clients or family/friends of clients. And we love that because they're plugging into the culture and are big enough fans that they would invest in an Icebox for themselves.

1851: What does an ideal franchisee look like? Are they semi-absentees? A passive investor or an active owner-operator? 

Alston: Semi-absentee. We are looking for people that want to build wealth, not generate income. We would rather studios be manager-run.

1851: How does Icebox support franchisees?

Alston: We have an amazing onboarding process here. We have franchisee concierges that will be assigned to a franchisee from the time the Franchise Agreement is signed, all the way to opening—and after. During that process, we also have our training team do one on one training. We have a really robust education process before they even open. Right before they open, we send a team out that helps them with training and really supports the manager and franchisee, making sure that they have everything they need. The support doesn’t stop once they open. From Studio Support teams and one on one coaching, our team is committed to making each studio successful. 

We also have monthly meetings called “chill hours,” which are like a roundtable for managers where they learn, share and celebrate. The same goes for estheticians.

Just last year, we implemented a PRP, which is a performance program that really helps studios that are falling underneath their averages that we set. And we had great success last year. There were huge percentage increases after the training and have started growing the program more. 

1851: What growth plans does Icebox have in the coming years?

Alston: We have a goal of selling 18 units this year. We had a huge growth from 2021 to 2022 of 74%, and we'd like to beat that number this year. 

We also want to grow certain aspects of our business, such as our memberships which give our studios consistent revenue. This year so far, we've already seen double-digit growth year over year for almost all our studios. 

1851: Why is now the time to buy into Icebox?

Alston: We are confident that the brand is well-positioned for the future. Not only is there a growing interest in self-care and wellness, but there is also a growing desire for personalized, stress-free experiences, something we were spearheading long before the pandemic. Throughout the pandemic, we really took the down time to create efficiency and perfect the business model. We believe more in what we do now than we did when we started. We keep getting better and better. 

Icebox is accomplishing what we started 11 years ago as the first brick-and-mortar cryotherapy studio in the country. From one location in Georgia to now having studio locations all over the country, each studio lovingly dedicates themselves to providing an enriching escape that instantly assist with pain management, overall wellness, and skin health. The entire Icebox family feels so lucky to be part of this meaningful mission to serve our communities. 

The total investment necessary to open an Icebox studio ranges from $384,950– $682,750, including a $45,000 franchise fee. For more information, visit: https://iceboxtherapy.com/franchise/