PEABODY — When Tom Gould found out in June of 2000 that he was due to be laid off from General Electric, he didn’t spend a lot of time moping about it.
“Simultaneously to that, I bought Treadwell’s,” said Gould.
And almost 21 years later, Gould is still Peabody’s favorite ice cream man.
When he bought the popular ice cream parlor on Margin Street he’d had managerial experience at the GE, but he didn’t even know how to make a banana split.
“I pretty much used my skill set that I learned at the GE,” says Gould, 66, who is still a fixture at the establishment. “I used them every day — with things like inventory, quality, and the people side of it (management). It all comes in handy.”
As for the rest, he learned as he went along. He retained some of the old employees who had worked for the Treadwell family, and they helped him with other aspects of the business.
“The only thing I knew about ice cream was how to eat it,” said Gould. “I hired a couple of kids who had already worked there, and they taught me the ins and outs of how to make a banana split and a soda. They made it sound simple.”
But it was anything but simple, Gould said. First, he took out a mortgage to buy the business, the physical plant and the property. But he didn’t want to over-extend too much, so he, his wife (Sharon) and their son (Michael) and daughter (Courtney) pulled in their belts and financed renovations through what the business made in revenue.
“(The building) needed a lot of TLC, both the interior and the exterior,” Gould said. “We were fortunate enough to buy the property with the business. It took a lot of years to get it where we wanted it to be physically.”
Among repairs the property needed were a new room, new pavement, freezers, a picnic area and machinery.
“If you didn’t do those things, you’d be struggling every day to run a good operation,” he said.
Treadwell’s had a couple of things going for it right away. First, it was an ice cream parlor centrally located near three schools. And second, it was on a corner lot, off Route 114, “and people could pull into the place from two directions,” he said.
So with that in mind, Gould simply tightened his belt — and those of his family members — and poured everything back into the plant. He credits his wife, a former teacher, for agreeing to undertake the venture with him.
“She knew I’d always wanted to do my own thing,” he said. “She became part of the staff.”
After 10 years of basically pouring all the profits back into the plant, Gould and Treadwell’s finally began seeing black ink on the ledger.
“Now,” he said, “it has become a great operation. My son and daughter are full time, as is my wife, and we have 22 other part-time employees.”
Gould, as well as being the proprietor of Treadwell’s, lives in the same neighborhood as the shop and is very active in civic affairs.
“Once we bought it, we became a major part of the community,” said Gould, who is also on the Peabody City Council (and who was The Item’s first Person of the Year from Peabody, in 2017). “People have embraced us. If you give, they will come. Once people find out we’re active in the community, they embrace us.”
Like just about every business, Gould has felt the sting of the COVID-19 pandemic. He shut down last March 24 and didn’t reopen until the second week of May, and when he did, business was done online to eliminate customer interaction. For about a month and a half, he did curbside pickup “and when things started getting a little better, we opened up full service, cutting our hours a little bit.”
Still, the place is open seven days a week, and Gould has built a tent in the parking lot to protect people from foul weather.
“It’s worked very well for us,” he said.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t anxiety.
“You have to keep your staff and your customers safe,” he said. “We’re polishing all the time, we discourage people from leaning on counters, and you have to keep your eye on the bottom line. You have to make money despite these things. It can be very, very stressful. But with the help of everyone, we’re surviving well.”
