Wendy Weng isn’t your average ice cream scooper, just as her company, Doiceful, isn’t your standard ice cream shop. With a degree in Information Systems, a passion for financial investing, and a lifelong obsession with ice cream, she channeled all her interests to launch one of the most thoughtful ice cream brands Shanghai has ever seen. 

Unlike most ice cream shops found dotting seemingly every street corner around town, Weng’s Doiceful sees uncommon flavors like buttered baguette, red date and walnut, and blue cheese and pear that take patrons on a fine dining level flavor expedition through front, middle, and back palate flavors and textures. After thousands of trials and endless R&D, Doiceful opened in Xintiandi in August 2024 with the mission to bring big smiles to customers’ faces with every scoop. And it has and continues to do just that.

Wendy's R&D Ice Cream Machine

We sat down with Weng to learn more about her background, Doiceful’s origin story, the trials and tribulations of entrepreneur life, and integral people and moments in her ice cream-fueled career.

Before we dive into Doiceful, please introduce yourself.
I'm Wendy Weng, founder of Doiceful. I've been serious about food for as long as I can remember. As a child, I once refused dinner because someone had double-dipped a ladle back into the soup pot. My family likes to joke that I cared about food handling before I even knew what food safety was.

I've also been obsessed with ice cream my entire life. Some of my parents’ favorite stories about me involve ice cream-related negotiations, including a family hike where I refused to keep walking unless I was rewarded scoop by scoop.

Outside of food, my other long-standing interest is investing. I started investing in high school and still do it actively today alongside running Doiceful. I studied Information Systems and Cognitive Science because I've always been fascinated by systems, decision-making, and how people experience the world.

Doiceful is, in a way, where all of those interests finally meet: the kid who took food too seriously, the student curious about how humans perceive the world, and the investor who still loves a good thesis.

What is Doiceful and how does it fit within Shanghai’s growing ice cream industry?
Doiceful is an artisanal American-style ice cream brand focused on small-batch production, bold flavor design, and high ingredient integrity.

While Shanghai has many dessert and gelato options, I saw an opportunity to introduce a more technically rigorous, American-style approach to ice cream, one that emphasizes flavor depth, aged bases, scratch-made inclusions, and a strong point of view on what great ice cream can be.

For me, ice cream is about more than just sweetness. It is about texture, aroma, body, finish, temperature, and how a flavor evolves over several bites. That is what makes the category so interesting to me.

Doiceful fits into Shanghai’s ice cream industry by bringing a different point of view: a richer, layered, ingredient-driven, intentionally made product. Doiceful isn’t trying to be everything to everyone; it’s trying to make ice cream with a strong identity.

What was the impetus for starting Doiceful, and how did it all come together? 
There was a very specific moment. I was in New York, wandering around Gramercy Park and walked into Caffe Panna. It had this beautiful oversized storefront but no seating, just a service window in the corner. I was staring at the menu, slightly overwhelmed, and asked the staff for a recommendation.

He asked what flavors I usually liked.

I said strawberry.

He told me to wait a second, disappeared into the back, came back a few minutes later, and handed me a cup of their Red Flag. “It’s my treat,” he said. “Hope you like it.”

It was a small gesture. But it genuinely made my day.

Standing there on a New York street corner, it struck me that ice cream can be a surprisingly powerful vehicle for happiness, not as a metaphor, but as something tangible and immediate. A scoop could change the emotional texture of someone’s afternoon.

That idea stayed with me, and once an idea lodges in me, I tend to go after it with both emotional curiosity and analytical obsession.

After that day, I found myself going deeper and deeper into ice cream: researching dairy science, flavor development, texture, production methods, and sensory design. What started as fascination gradually became conviction.

I realized I wanted to build something that could intentionally create that feeling – joy, surprise, comfort, delight – and bring it to Shanghai through a distinctly thoughtful, artisanal approach to ice cream.

Everything that followed (the experiments, the recipe development, and eventually Doiceful) traces back to that fateful scoop on a New York street corner.

Why did you decide to strike out on your own to build up a business?
I don’t think I started Doiceful because I had a romantic idea of entrepreneurship. In reality, building a business is much less glamorous than people imagine. It is constant problem-solving, constant trade-offs, and a lot of details.

But I have always been drawn to building things from first principles. I like understanding how systems work, whether that is a company, a recipe, a market, or the way people make decisions.

Aula Clabo Italian Master Course

With Doiceful, I felt a level of determination that I had rarely felt before. I didn’t just want to sell ice cream. I wanted to build a brand around a very specific belief: that small sensory experiences can create real joy, and that food made with care can make people feel seen, comforted, and delighted.

Starting my own business gave me the freedom to build that idea without compromising too early. I could define the product, the service, the visual language, the tone, and the standard of care.

It is difficult, but I think that is also what makes it meaningful. When something is built from your own taste, judgment, and values, every detail matters more.

Who is Doiceful for most?
Doiceful is for people who genuinely care about flavor, craft, and discovery.

Some of our guests are very serious food lovers. They want to talk about ingredients, butterfat content, or why a certain flavor has a longer finish. Others are simply looking for a small moment of happiness after dinner.

We have young professionals, families, couples, travelers, creatives, and people who come alone with a book and a dog. What connects them is not age or background, but curiosity.

I think Doiceful is especially for people who like things that feel considered. They may not know all the technical details, but they can sense when something is made with intention.

That is the kind of customer I love serving: someone who is open to being surprised, but also appreciates care.

What are examples of flavors and sweet treats offered at Doiceful?
We offer rotating seasonal and classic flavors, often designed around contrast, aroma, and texture.

Some guest favorites include Salted Caramel with Fleur de Sel, Dark Chocolate Brownie, Buttered Baguette, and Drunk Pecan. We also enjoy developing more unexpected seasonal flavors, combinations that might draw inspiration from fruit, tea, baked goods, herbs, or nostalgic desserts.

For me, a good flavor should not be flat. It should have a beginning, middle, and finish. It should make you want another bite, not because it is simply sweet, but because there is something to keep discovering.

Beyond scoops, we offer pints, sundaes, affogatos, ice cream sandwiches, chocolates, and other ice-cream-centered treats. The goal is that every item on the menu can stand up to being your favorite.

What makes Shanghai the ideal market for Doiceful?
Shanghai is open-minded, internationally influenced, and highly receptive to niche concepts done well. Consumers here are willing to explore, compare, and develop taste preferences. That creates an environment where a differentiated independent brand can exist.

Shanghai also has an incredibly dynamic food culture. Being in this ecosystem constantly pushes us to improve, experiment, and think more deeply about what makes our work distinct.

How is Doiceful different from other ice cream offerings around Shanghai?
One major difference is our production philosophy. We make our ice cream in small batches using professional techniques, including pasteurization and base maturation. We make inclusions and components from scratch whenever possible rather than relying on premade mixes. For example, the granola in our Brambleberry Crisp we make in-house. The brownie bites swirled in the Dark Chocolate Brownie are also baked by us before being scattered in the ice cream base.

We also think deeply about flavor architecture – not just sweetness, but aroma, contrast, texture, finish, and how an ice cream evolves across multiple bites.

Ultimately, our goal isn’t simply to make ice cream that tastes “good.” We want to create ice cream that feels thoughtful.

Wendy with Professor Douglas Goff

What were the biggest challenges when starting Doiceful?
The biggest one was earning my own confidence. Before I opened anything, I spent a long stretch in what I half-jokingly call my research phase. I read close to a hundred books on ice cream (founder recipe books from places like Salt & Straw, Messina, and Ben &Jerry’s), magazine-style references like So Cool, and proper food science textbooks, including Professor Douglas Goff's. I started from the very foundation: milk composition, the freezing process, mix calculation, flavor construction. It pulled in physics, chemistry, and math in a way I really enjoyed.

Ice Cream R&D

Then came the lab. My assistant and I would design controlled experiments, sometimes a dozen variations just to understand how a different sugar or a different milk would change the final scoop. After roughly a thousand formula tests, I finally felt confident enough that I could make ice cream that was consistent, not just good on a lucky day. That's when I let myself start designing the store.

Ice Cream Trialing

The other ongoing challenge is educating without lecturing. When you're introducing a new category, there's a temptation to over-explain, to put the science of butterfat and serving temperature on every surface. But customers don't want a lesson; they want a great experience that quietly rewards their hunger. Finding that balance took several rounds of brand work to get right.

What was the moment that made you most proud of?
There's a customer who comes in every week. One day he walked in and handed me a single sunflower just to say thank you for making ice cream he loved.

I don't think I'll ever forget that. We're a small shop. We make ice cream. And yet somehow that scoop had meant enough to him that he stopped on his way over and bought a flower for us. That kind of gesture isn't something you can engineer or market your way into. It only happens when what you're making genuinely lands.

I'm also proud, in a quieter way, of seeing strangers bring their friends and families and introduce us as "you have to try this place." That kind of organic trust is what we're really building toward.

Ice Cream Certification at Penn State

What are you working on next for Doiceful?
We're deepening what we've already built, refining how we show up across channels, sharpening the service experience in store, and continuing to develop seasonal flavors that surprise long-term regulars.

Growth is on my mind too, but I want to be honest: the fastest path isn't always the right one, especially for a brand whose entire value proposition depends on consistency and craft. We're thinking carefully about what thoughtful growth looks like, and what we'd never compromise on along the way.

Who is a female role model who inspires you?
My mother.

What I learned from her is that softness and steel aren't opposites. At work she was decisive, unsentimental, the kind of leader who moved quickly and didn't waste anyone's time. At home, she was the most tender version of herself. Neither one was a performance, they were both her, just pointed in different directions.

The part that moves me most now is something I only really understood after starting Doiceful. She gives me strength and determination, but I can also see, sometimes, how much it costs her to watch me go through all of this on my own. She never tells me to stop. She just keeps showing up. I think that's one of the hardest things a mother does – to believe in her daughter more than she fears for her.

When I have to switch in a single afternoon between negotiating with a supplier and writing a thoughtful note to a regular customer, I think of her. She made it look possible.

Do you have any advice for women entrepreneurs?
One thing I’ve learned is that you don’t need to fit a fixed image of what an entrepreneur is supposed to be. Different people build in different ways. Some founders are loud and very outward-facing; others are quieter, more detail-oriented, more reflective. I think the important thing is to understand your own strengths and build from there.

For me, entrepreneurship has been a process of learning how to trust my own judgment while staying humble enough to keep listening to customers, to the team, to the market, and to the product itself.

I also think it is important not to be too discouraged by uncertainty. There are many moments when you do not know exactly what you are doing, and you simply have to take the next responsible step.

So if I were speaking to another woman who is thinking about starting something, I would say: start with what you genuinely care about, stay curious, ask for help when you need it, and allow yourself to grow into the role. You do not have to feel completely ready before you begin. I certainly wasn't.