During a rush, if Cryo Rolls’ livestream viewers came to see the action in person, they might form a line that started at the rolled ice cream shop’s downtown Bellingham location and ended somewhere between Ferndale and Custer.
That line would include about 27,000 people, which owner Izaiah Ellis said is the most his livestream on TikTok has attracted at any one time. Over the course of a day, up to 2.2 million people might watch his workers form rolls of ice cream which, arranged together, look like flowers.
Ellis said he began posting on TikTok in 2021, when he had an ice cream machine but no shop. He got the idea after meeting an internet-famous dog, whose owner offered to shout him out on social media. The shout-out didn’t work — the two had different audiences — but the opportunity got Ellis started. An early clip clocked around 2 million views.
Now, a Cryo Rolls video might earn anywhere from hundreds of thousands of plays to 17 million. Ellis said he never knows what will become a hit with his audience. He just tries to keep it fun. People see the videos online, and then, he hopes, they walk through his door at the Granary building.
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