One of the questions we get asked all the time is, how many flavours do you make?
People are always amazed that we don’t have a definitive flavour list or product line, and that we don’t ever intend on having one, either. We make seriously delicious ice cream, but part of what keeps both our customers coming back for more, and our kitchen team stimulated and motivated, is that we’re always creating, evolving and tweaking flavours and pairings. Part of this is due to our strict observance of the seasons, so when one seasons’ crops finish for the year, we have to find something fantastic to do with a whole new bunch of fruit and nuts. But it’s also about the desire to offer more, to create more, to continue celebrating the infinite flavours and textures ice cream can provide.
As we’ve taken on more customers and markets, the ongoing challenge has been to find time for development in the midst of commercial production. We initially set aside Mondays for development because our first dairy farmer, Reuben, could only deliver on Tuesdays, so we weren’t going to be churning gallons of ice cream on Mondays even if we wanted to. Now we have three dairy suppliers and no lack of cream on Mondays, but we still try to earmark at least part of the day for development, because if you leave it until the end of the week, well, it’s just not going to happen.
So the first positive thing to come out of Our First Winter (please note capitalization) was the realization that if production slowed down, we’d probably have more time for development.Well, we are pretty much in June and so far, we haven’t slowed down. At all. But now with Good Food & Wine Show behind us, we are embarking on our first week where we don’t have any large event, function or order within the next two weeks. I thought this would be rather a scary week for us, but now that we’re here, I’m so excited. We’ve designated it DEVELOPMENT WEEK, and we’ve got a long list of things we’ve specially set aside to finalize, adjust and in some cases, start from scratch on developing.
And since the people we’re developing all the stuff for are you, Dear Readers, we thought we’d take you along for the ride. We will be blogging every day this week, showing you the stuff we’re getting right, and the stuff we will no doubt get wrong, asking for your feedback, and generally having some fun.
So we present, in our usual haphazard manner:
Fashion Week, eat your heart out.
