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I think with all businesses the best place to start is by getting a great product, starting small and then expanding when it's clear I have a market.
So for an ice-cream business I would get my ice-cream flavours to perfection. I would probably then start with a small ice-cream stall or one of those freezer-bicycles and market test my product.
At this point it's important to have a good concept behind the product, so I would work on branding. Decisions around whether it's going to be a premium ice-cream, traditional, organic or target a particular demographic. This can also be tested with the ice-cream stall.
While I'm testing the product idea I'd also be drafting out the business plan. If it's real ice cream then the biggest question is where you will source the ingredients, particularly the dairy. The other big issue with ice-cream is that it's seasonal, so there's lots of research required into how much you are likely to spend and how to handle those long winter months when no-one eats it.
If it all looks good at this point then I would look to expand from there, looking for local business tie-ins and trying to create a strong local presence and lots of press before going any further. There's a need for capital to expand and scale so I'd probably be looking for a partnership.
After that it's really a question of what kind of business you want. You could stay local or try and land some deals for wider distribution through countrywide retailers. I don't think that it's an easy business to break into, and in particular there is lots of competition from dairy farms who have lower costs, so maybe small / premium / local is more realistic. It sounds fun but I'm sure it's a crazy amount of hard work!
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