East Sacramento landlord sues Doc Burnstein’s Ice Cream Lab over breach of contract

A sweet plan to keep an ice cream shop at a well-known location has turned sour in East Sacramento, where Doc Burnstein’s Ice Cream Lab now faces a lawsuit from its landlords at the site of former neighborhood institution Burr’s Fountain.

Filed on June 1 by Debra Glauz and Steven Link, the lawsuit claims Doc Burnstein’s breached its rental agreement by not paying full rent at 4920 Folsom Blvd. for more than two years. First reported by the Sacramento Business Journal, the lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount of money for damages accrued during that time.

Doc Burnstein’s signed its 15-year lease for its 1,650-square foot space in February 2019 and paid $7,000 monthly until that December, the lawsuit alleged. No rent was paid in January 2020, the lawsuit claims, then Doc Burnstein’s allegedly paid $3,000 per month from July 2020 to January 2022.

All that, and Doc Burnstein’s never even conducted business indoors. The former Burr’s was in need of major renovations, so Doc Burnstein’s operated an ice cream trailer in the building’s parking lot for 15 months until early 2022, something the lawsuit claimed was done without the landlords’ permission.

The company learned about the lawsuit from the Sacramento Business Journal, investor and former CEO David Long said.

“We did not make a success of the place and we’ve been needing to resolve it, but we haven’t really been in active discussions about how to fix the problems,” Long said.

While Doc Burnstein’s never secured a building permit from the city of Sacramento, Long said three or four construction management firms estimated the building would need about $250,000 in repairs just to retrofit bathrooms, energy efficiency and other installed issues.

That didn’t include the costs to bring in new decor or seating. Once the pandemic began, Long said, the idea of a successful ice cream shop was “a Hail Mary.”

“The amount of love and support that we got from the East Sac neighborhood made us stick it out longer than we should have,” Long said. “Everybody had this vision of what it could be, but it just proved to be too big. I’m really sorry we weren’t able to make it work.”

The East Sacramento store was going to be among the first of 100 new locations for Arroyo Grande-based Doc Burnstein’s, founded in 2003. That expansion has stalled across the board. A Chico location shut down as well, leaving just the original three on the Central Coast.

Jim Burr worked at Vic’s Ice Cream in Land Park for more than 20 years before running his own East Sacramento restaurant for 29 years. It served Vic’s the whole time, plus sandwiches and soup, until closing in 2018.

This story was originally published June 8, 2022 at 5:25 AM.