{"id":4212,"date":"2018-08-01T20:30:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-01T20:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maderatribustg.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=4212"},"modified":"2026-05-13T18:30:45","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T18:30:45","slug":"new-shop-owner-invests-in-madera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/new-shop-owner-invests-in-madera\/","title":{"rendered":"New shop owner invests in Madera"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Cold Stone Creamery, Madera\u2019s newest ice cream shop, is the culmination of some eight years of work on the part of the owner and his family.<\/p>

The opening of the ice cream shop has been eight years in the making.<\/p>

For owner Ricky Patel, it\u2019s the sixth business he has opened since he started with Swirl Smoothie and Nutrition Shop in 2011. Now, he is looking for more. Patel has three more businesses planned in the next few months.<\/p>

\u201cIt feels great to finally get it opened,\u201d Patel said. \u201cI felt accomplished and blessed. I got told 14 times, \u201cNo.\u201d They were saying it was going to be unsuccessful and it wasn\u2019t the market for it. If you don\u2019t believe in yourself, you have to go with it. Great things happen. If you take the loss, then go back up and do something else. If you have the motivation going, a lot of things are accomplished.\u201d<\/p>

In addition to Swirl and Cold Stone Creamery, Patel and his wife Monica have opened Evolution Strength and Conditioning and a Swirl distribution center. He also opened a Swirl Express, but closed it when he opened Evolution. He also took over ownership of Casa Grande Motel on Ave. 12 and State Route 99.<\/p>

\u201cOur company took over 50 percent of the hotel,\u201d Patel said. \u201cWe want to expand it. Avenue 12 is going to be expanding dramatically. We want to be proactive and get things moving. Chevy is looking to moving there. There will be a truck stop over there. The college is thinking about expanding there. Those are all in the works. We closed Swirl express because we have a smoothie bar in the gym and it\u2019s right down the street.\u201d<\/p>

Patel came to Madera in 1999 and started working at Home Depot. He spent a few years there before coming wanting to open a Cold Stone Creamy. But, he hit a snag.<\/p>

\u201cThey came out and approved it,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were supposed to be where Baskin Robbins is. We went to 14 different banks. I had about $100,000 saved up. After 14 times, \u2018What do I need to do?\u2019 I had already been into fitness and health. I was in the Midwest and saw the concepts of smoothies and nutrition. That\u2019s when I took the $100,000 I had and opened Swirl. From Swirl, we went to Swirl Express, then the gym, Swirl distribution and now Cold Stone.\u201d<\/p>

Next for Patel is a wellness center that will open right next door to Cold Stone. The center will feature cryotherapy using liquid nitrogen.<\/p>

\u201cIt replicates a 30 minute ice bath and do it in three minutes and reap the benefits of it,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are two places in Fresno and Clovis, but they\u2019re at a rehabilitation center and are a bit pricey. We\u2019re going to make it more cost friendly, about $25 a session. The building is ready to go. We\u2019re waiting for this to calm down a little. We have to start within three months. I already told the landlord we\u2019re going to take the space next door.\u201d<\/p>

He will also move Swirl to the same side of the complex as Cold Stone. Current Swirl neighbor Cazadores has plans to expand.<\/p>

\u201cWe\u2019ll take a larger spot with a sit-down area, fresh juicing and will try to do health foods,\u201d Patel said.<\/p>

\u201cRicky creates the ideas,\u201d Monica said. \u201cWe, as a family, try to make it happen, to make it work. He\u2019s onto the next idea and we\u2019re still trying to take care of the last idea.\u201d<\/p>

While still reaping the benefits of Cold Stone\u2019s opening, Patel is already thinking of his next venture. After the wellness center, he will open a business consulting and investment group called Hand-in-Hand Investment Group.<\/p>

\u201cWe will take projects we want to open for the town and own 30-40 percent of it and the rest will be community funded and they have a stake in it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt will be driven by telling our friends and family about it. It will be self-sustained for a small community. Our purpose is to help job growth, community tax revenue and community growth. The principal is if we do that to this town, we can apply that same principal to other smaller towns and keep growing as a company and developing different communities.\u201d<\/p>

After that, Patel will also start a preportioned meal business \u2014 Mr. and Mrs. Fit Meals.<\/p>

\u201cWe\u2019re kind of in the works with all of that. We\u2019ve done prototypes. We\u2019re trying to find out what people are liking. My buddy is doing the same thing in Houston and it\u2019s big. Ours is more for everyday folks that want a good meal.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI feel great,\u201d he said. \u201cJust having my wife with me and sharing these moments and know we have each other\u2019s back and completing these tasks together. It\u2019s a family affair. We have a strong foundation. Everyone we\u2019ve come across wants to help. We want to help also. It\u2019s a mutual respect. I was born in San Francisco. Coming from a big town to somewhere small where community involvement is so big is so awesome.\u201d<\/p>

Patel is determined to put Madera on the commercial map. He hopes that by creating good commercial businesses, it would help Madera\u2019s numbers in bringing in more business to the community.<\/p>

\u201cEveryone visits outside of Madera and sees things that we can utilize from outside and bring back to our own community,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m just willing to take that plunge and say let\u2019s do this. That\u2019s the concept of our next project, Hand-in-Hand Investment group. We want to bring outside different businesses here. If we start continuing to build businesses, it becomes a trend and other bigger companies see development.<\/p>

\u201cIf we\u2019re developing a good steady stream of numbers, they see we\u2019re a good city to build in. We can plant seeds and make it happen as long as more people take the plunge and invest in this town.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cSometimes, I\u2019ll try to knock some sense into him,\u201d Monica said. \u201cHe never stops working. He just wants to work all the time. I have no other option than to support him and do the work with him. Because if he\u2019s working, that means I have to work. We got married four months after Swirl opened. These past eight years, we\u2019ve opened a business almost every year. We\u2019ve been very busy.\u201d<\/p>

Patel is confident in the success of Cold Stone, just like he was when he first wanted to open the ice cream shop eight years ago.<\/p>

\u201cWe\u2019ve kind of tapered off since the opening,\u201d he said. \u2018When we did the forecasting and projections, we\u2019re falling into the place we\u2019re supposed to be. We\u2019re familiar with the numbers. The highest grossing store in Northern California is in Visalia. Our numbers are projecting with the other stores, but a little higher. We\u2019ve been in the top five of Northern California. I know we\u2019ll come down a little, but I\u2019m okay with it.\u201d<\/p>

Even though he has five businesses and more in the works, he knows he will be able to handle it because of his philosophy and because of the support from his family, especially his wife.<\/p>

\u201cWe\u2019re not like the old school business owners where they\u2019re 24\/7 in their facilities,\u201d Patel said. \u201cWe hire people. We\u2019re more okay taking time away from the businesses. We\u2019ll always pop in. Swirl is self-managed and the gym is self-managed. We\u2019re not any of those places. We\u2019ll stop in, but rarely. Our focus is on Cold Stone, right now. We\u2019re not thinking about what\u2019s going on. We trust our employees to make the right decisions and give them the leeway to make those decisions.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cWe do everything together,\u201d Monica said. \u201cEven when we opened Express, we all worked to get it open. We\u2019ve always been family-oriented.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cold Stone Creamery, Madera\u2019s newest ice cream shop, is the culmination of some eight years of work on the part of the owner and his family. The opening of the ice cream shop has been eight years in the making. For owner Ricky Patel, it\u2019s the sixth business he has opened since he started with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":39400,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_theme","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_angie_page":false,"page_builder":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-4212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-business"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}