Three Twins ice cream, the Petaluma company that carved out a market for mass-market organic ice cream, is ceasing operations because of financial problems related to the coronavirus.

In posts on Facebook and the company website Friday, Three Twins CEO Neal Gottlieb announced that the company would cease operations immediately. The reason, he stated, was that the business had required an infusion of capital even before the pandemic and that option was no longer available. An expansion of sales into grocery stores, where profit margins are often low for suppliers, was a particular challenge.

“We were always working towards a scale where we could have sustained profitability, but in more recent years we saw the business contract and margins get squeezed further,” he wrote.

In an interview, Gottlieb said that he and other members of the company had known for about five weeks that he would need to close the business and had already laid off workers at its two Bay Area scoop shops in Larkspur and Napa.

“I feel terrible letting people go,” he said. But, he added, “It’s bittersweet. It’s been 15 years and a very difficult 15 years. A lot of people from outside would assume it was making a huge amount of money and I was wealthy. It’s never been the case.”

Three Twins, which Gottlieb co-founded in 2005 in San Rafael and claimed to be the first organic ice cream chain, was sold at individual Three Twins scoop shops, farmers’ markets and corner stores alongside big-name brands like Haagen-Dazs, differentiated by its organic ingredients and whimsical flavors like Dad’s Cardamom and Lemon Cookie.

The product generally costs about $1 more per pint than the competition in stores, with the goal of making it affordable, Gottlieb said, but that kept the margins too low.

“It couldn’t be an $8 pint like so many of the artisan pints are these days,” he said.

Besides its Petaluma factory and headquarters, the company had an additional manufacturing plant in Sheboygan, Wis., with about 42 employees total, not counting those in its retail shops.

The company had licenses with additional scoop shops at San Francisco International Airport and Berkeley as well as in Korea and Japan, and its ice cream was sold at major grocery stores in the Bay Area. It was unclear what would happen to its international locations.

“They have product for a few months. It’s possible someone will buy it out of bankruptcy,” Gottlieb said.

Tara Duggan is The Chronicle’s assistant food editor. Email: tduggan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @taraduggan