Paighten HarkinsThe Utah-based, keto-friendly Rebel Creamery has vowed to stay in business and keep its products on shelves, despite recently filing for bankruptcy protection after losing a court case and being ordered to pay more than $23 million to a competitor.
Rebel Creamery, a low-carb ice cream company founded nine years ago after a Kickstarter fundraising campaign, recently lost a court case against another ice cream maker that said Rebel’s packaging was too similar to its own. Rebel is appealing the ruling, which required it to pay the New York-based ice cream brand, Van Leeuwen, $23.785 million and barred Rebel from selling pints of ice cream that “bear trade dress likely to be confused.”
The company announced, “We are very much still in business!!!” on its Instagram account this week, noting that the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing was “just a reorganization to protect us during the appeal.”
“[A]s of right now we are not going anywhere! We will still be in all your favorite stores and online with new packaging in order to comply with the ruling,” the post said.
Van Leeuwen, which started as a food truck in 2008 and has since expanded into grocery stores and opened shops across the country, filed its lawsuit against Rebel in April 2021, alleging Rebel “duplicated virtually every single design detail and element” of the trade dress Van Leeuwen uses, according to federal court filings.
Both brands employ minimalism and use pastel-colored, monochromatic packaging — “sometimes the same colors for the same flavors” — as well as black script logos, U.S. District Court Judge Eric Komitee wrote in the July order.
The similarities go even further: Both brands promote their social media handles in the same location on their pints, he wrote. They also both transition from a script font in the logo to capital block letters for flavor names.
“The only distinctions between Van Leeuwen and Rebel packaging are Rebel’s keto elements,” Komitee wrote.
(Paighten Harkins | The Salt Lake Tribune) Pints of Rebel Creamery ice cream on a grocery store shelves in Salt Lake City on Aug. 18, 2026.
(Frank Franklin II | AP) An assortment of ice cream flavors is shown at a Van Leeuwen shop on Wednesday, May 15, 2024, in the Brooklyn borough of New York.
While buyers had mentioned the similarities between the brands before, including a Publix buyer who worried customers may confuse the products, Rebel founders Austin and Courtney Archibald testified “they had never seen Van Leeuwen ice cream when creating Rebel’s packaging,” according to the order.
In Rebel’s statement on Instagram, the company said “we have never in all the years we have been around, had a single customer report mixing us up with said brand” — except for in the “weeks before” the October 2024 trial began.
Court documents show that two months earlier, Rebel received a report from a customer whose husband had confused the products, “because ‘your product was placed right next to Van Leeuwen and look the same.’”
Rebel said it would change its packaging in the meantime, starting with its lids — “the fastest thing we could change.” Rebel’s ice cream was seen in Salt Lake City stores this week.
(Jeff Dempsey | The Salt Lake Tribune) Pints of Rebel and Van Leeuwen ice creams. A judge ruled that Utah-based Rebel Creamery was using packaging that was too similar to Van Leeuwen's.
Paighten is an Enterprise reporter at The Salt Lake Tribune. She covers a variety of topics, including business, health, growth and the legal justice system — sometimes all at once. She is from southern Oklahoma, and lived and worked in the state, most recently at the Tulsa World, before starting at The Tribune in October 2017.