Coolhaus co-founders Natasha Case and Freya Estreller started baking cookies, making ice cream and combining them into “cool houses” in 2008. With mutual backgrounds in the design and real estate fields, they began naming their ice cream sandwiches after architects and architectural movements that inspired them. (Rem Koolhaas is a Dutch architect.)
The company got its official start when the co-founders bought a beat-up old postal van on Craigslist and headed out to the Coachella Valley Music Festival in April 2009 to make their debut. They garnered what Case called “a huge social media following.” The company grew from there thanks to word-of-mouth and taking risks, “but calculated risks,” Case said.