And starting at Guard for your North Carolina Tar Heels…the new Ben & Jerry’s ice cream shop owner, Seth Trimble!
Recently, the Tar Heels guard announced that he had become the new owner of the local Ben & Jerry’s shop in Chapel Hill at 21 years old. Let’s add that to the growing list of accolades for the young basketball star hailing from Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.
What sparked the innovation of ownership?
During high school, Trimble said that basketball and ownership were always on his mind while attending Menomonee Falls High School.
“Just the idea of ownership, it’s been in my head, honestly, since mid-days of high school. I’ve just always had the idea of just growing and continuing to just expand and show who I am outside of like the basketball court,” Trimble explained in a recent interview with Inside Carolina’s YouTube channel.
But why should it be a surprise? We weren’t born with labels or limitations on what we can do in this world. Life is truly a canvas, waiting to be painted with our imagination. Trimble already knew that basketball would be the passion to come first, but that doesn’t mean it would be the only one to come to fruition.
“I know the ball doesn’t juggle forever, and I know that me as a human being, I’m allowed to have many interests in life, you know, basketball is a thing that I crave the most, it’s what I love to do, but, you know, there’s things that I also want to explore and that’s the business world, that’s entrepreneurship,” he said.
This opportunity came at the perfect time. Using his NIL earnings, he was able to purchase the Chapel Hill franchise, becoming the company’s youngest franchise owner ever.
Inspiring, right? But let’s backtrack to how this opportunity came about, because when preparation meets opportunity, there’s always someone holding the keys.
Antoni McBroom is his name, and Ben & Jerry’s has been his game since starting as a scooper back in 2002. After four years of putting in the work, he was eventually able to purchase his own franchise in the same town where he earned his degree. A couple of years later, he founded Primo Partners, and in 2024, he expanded his ownership portfolio with Starbucks.
During the 2022 Final Four, McBroom’s son asked to take a picture with Trimble. That moment sparked a conversation between Trimble and the McBroom family, which eventually blossomed into a mentorship.
This small interaction led to a series of discovery calls between McBroom and Trimble, during which McBroom eventually told Trimble that ownership could be a real possibility for him.
“About last year, I mean my sophomore year, me and Antonio, we had our little meetings, and he would just speak about it, you know, this is what you could do one day, you could become a Ben & Jerry’s owner,” Trimble said.
Let this story serve as a reminder to never limit yourself or what is possible for you in this world.
Photo Credit: Instagram: SethTrim
