Every kid at the ice cream social had a cone in hand, except his nephew. It was the end of a summer program and Quin Porter noticed a small moment most adults may have dismissed. A kid with food allergies, left out of the treat everyone else was enjoying. Quin didn't let it pass.
"So I said, ‘Google, how to make ice cream?’," he remembers about that moment.
That search, typed on a random afternoon around 2016, became Scoopt'd: Dairy Free Treats, an Atlanta-based ice cream brand made entirely without dairy, soy, nuts, tree nuts, gluten, or any animal product. But if you only take away that Quin solved a dessert problem, you're missing the real story. Ice cream is just the latest place his one move has shown up. The move itself is much older.
The Kid Who Always Had to Fix Something
Quin always knew he'd either be a doctor or run his own business when he grew up. "I remember always thinking about different things or trying to figure out, fix things," he recalls.
Around age 13, that meant a lawn care hustle he still calls his "coolest thing," complete with a sales pitch about neighbors left with grass clippings in the street. "I’ll come make sure that everything is picked up," he says about how he pitched the service to his customers. A couple of years later, it was sneakers. Quin could study a shoe, look away, and freehand sketch the same design from memory. When friends said his original custom hand-drawn concepts were missing something, he called his older brother, a graphic designer, and had a family logo made in two days. He put it on a redesigned shoe, and his classmates' reaction convinced him he had something. Soon he was selling shirts with that logo in high school.
None of these were businesses in the traditional sense. They were all problems, solved on the spot, with whatever skill and resource he already had.
A Degree Built for How He Thinks
At Albany State University, Quin studied supply chain and logistics management, a major he found after a childhood habit of asking why a toy said "Made in China" but sat in his hand in Georgia. The program was project-based, which mattered for someone wired the way Quin is. "I always joke with people, like, hey, my middle name is efficiency, because I like to streamline what we're doing," he says. And that’s the operating system underneath everything he's built since.
That same move showed up again when dressing up daily for business classes led him to tailored suits, then pocket squares and lapel pins, then teaching himself to sew his own accessories. He and his best friend wore full suits around campus, sparked a small rivalry with a neighboring school over who dressed better, and Quin ended up doing pop-up fashion shows before he'd even graduated. Another problem, solved with whatever was closest at hand.
When the Job Search Didn't Work
After graduation, Quin did everything right. He joined professional supply chain organizations and networked at industry events with people from Coca-Cola, Pfizer, and beyond. Then he sent out application after application with not much response. "I got depressed because I'm like, these people are not calling me back," he says, recounting the frustration.
He went back to coaching gymnastics, something he’d done since he was a teenager, and it was in that in-between season that his nephew's ice cream social happened. Quin's first batch, made with substituted non-dairy ingredients, came out rock hard. "I don't think it's supposed to be this crunchy," Quin laughs about his nephew’s initial response. He went back to Google, this time searching how to make ice cream creamy, and started interviewing anyone who'd talk to him, like ice cream makers, vegan chefs, and natural food experts. Most couldn't answer his questions about allergen substitutes, but enough could that he kept refining.
He brought batches to the gym, with parents' permission, and noticed something surprising. "I'm realizing that a lot of kids never had ice cream before," he says, because dairy, soy, or nut allergies had shut them out of every option on the shelf. So he kept building one, testing on the two audiences he trusted to be honest: kids and the adults at his brothers' house parties.
His first official sale was in 2017 at a family discount of five dollars. After that, he increased the price to eight dollars per pint. His mother named the brand Just Chill, until a trademark search ruled that option out, sending Quin back to the drawing board for four months before Scoopt'd: Dairy Free Treats was born. Since then, the brand has grown to six flavors with fun names like, “Melanin” for chocolate. "This is melanin, because this is rich, right?" he says about the fan favorite that has customers who used to hate chocolate ice cream loving Scoopt’d.
Steal These Moves
Quin's story isn't really about lawn care, sneakers, pocket squares, or ice cream. It's about one move, made over and over that’s gotten him where he is now. Here are a few of the moves you can steal for your own journey.
Solve the problem directly in front of you. Quin never set out to build an ice cream empire; he set out to make sure his nephew wouldn't be left out of ice cream socials. The scale came later. If you're waiting for the "right" problem to feel big enough to justify starting, notice how small his actual starting points were.
Your training shows up in unexpected places. Quin's supply chain degree wasn't wasted when the corporate jobs didn't call back. It became the forecasting system behind an ice cream brand. “My inventory levels, my forecasting, that comes from my supply chain training," he shares. Whatever skill you built elsewhere is probably more transferable than you think.
"Figure it out" is all the permission you need. Quin's signature move has taken him from lawncare to fashion to allergy-free ice cream, with lots of other interesting and creative things in between. "Figure it out, you do it” is the advice he’d give his younger self. It’s also what’s gotten him this far, and it’s your permission to keep moving, too.
A rock-hard first batch that eventually became a formula worth selling and six flavors in booths around Atlanta. But Quin’s one move was never about ice cream. It was about trusting that whatever's in front of him right now is worth figuring out, with whatever he's got.
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Move in purpose, on purpose. The Purpose Post tells the stories of creatives and founders who stopped waiting for permission and made their move. If you're already in motion, or getting ready to be, you belong here. Join us. 👇🏾
