Creative Chill from Coolhaus

By Lorrie Baumann

Premium ice cream brand Coolhaus is getting set for summer with the launch of seven new ice cream flavors and three new ice cream sandwich varieties this year at Natural Products Expo West. The new ice cream flavors will be available in pints and include Milkshake & Fries, Street Cart Churro Dough, Midnight Munchies, Farmers Market Strawberry Cheesecake, Buttered French Toast, Chocolate Love and Best of Both Worlds Vanilla.

The three new ice cream sandwich varieties are That Dough Though Ice Cream Sammie, Gimme S’mores Ice Cream Sammie and Birthday Cake Ice Cream Sammie. That Dough Though combines chewy chocolate chip cookies and cookie dough ice cream, Gimme S’mores combines graham chocolate chip cookies and marshmallow graham ice cream, and Birthday Cake offers a sugar cookie with sprinkles and cupcake frosting ice cream.

The flavors as well as their names represent the women-owned company’s philosophy of having fun and being creative while also standing up for the quality of their super-premium ice cream. “We take what we do seriously, but we don’t take ourselves seriously,” says CEO and co-Founder Natasha Case. “We really also like to use design for storytelling and expressing our values. … We’re always, always making sure that our message is being heard by our consumers, that we’re creating this top-notch brand for them.”

Just to give a couple more examples of the kind of creativity sparked by that intention, Coolhaus’ Milkshake & Fries Ice Cream offers salted Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream with shoestring french fries and milk chocolate malt balls, while Midnight Munchies offers chocolate peanut butter ice cream with chocolate-covered pretzels and peanut butter cups. Buttered French Toast Ice Cream, which suggests the possibility of either having dessert for breakfast or having breakfast for dessert, offers a combination of buttered brown sugar ice cream with pecan pralines, cakey toast pieces and a maple swirl.

All this started when Case and co-Founder Freya Estreller met and discovered that they shared interests in both architecture and ice cream. Case’s background is in architecture and design, while Estreller had a background in real estate development. The two of them started baking cookies that they built into ice cream sandwiches that they saw as a kind of edible architecture. “I love that it [ice cream] is a canvas for all these great flavors. It’s the ultimate kind of nostalgic comfort food,” Case says. “It’s good for kids, good for adults, and when you combine it with the cookies, it opens up even more flavor possibilities. The combination of the two always spoke to me.”
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Once they’d come up with some ice cream sandwiches that they named after the architects and architectural movements that inspired them, they began working on how to go commercial with their concept. “We started the business and fell in love and decided that the best way to get the product to market was with a food truck,” Case says.

A food truck in California in 2009 inspired a 2011 food truck in New York City. “We’re an L.A.-born and raised brand. This is definitely home turf, and I love the way that L.A. has become this food destination,” Case says. “New York was an obvious extension because of the connection between the two large cities. We had clients in New York who would book us for L.A. activities.” Then friends who were also former architects reached out and asked the pair to bring their brand to Texas, and in 2012, they opened a food truck in Dallas. They decided that next they’d explore other channels, and now they also operate two scoop shops in California, one in Old Town Pasadena and the other in Culver City, which offers the advantage of being central to southern California’s entertainment industry, Case says. “Culver City we really liked because it’s really central. There’s a rich history of arts and entertainment with studios there,” she says. “We felt it was a neighborhood that was on its way to up and coming. We like to be pioneers and bring the elevated brands to a space and be a leader, and that’s exactly what’s happening in Culver City.” Coolhaus has continued to grow and currently includes a fleet of nine trucks and carts, three scoop shops and the wholesale distribution in more than 6,000 retailers nationwide that’s now the biggest part of the business.

All the way along, it’s been important to the pair to emphasize that their brand is owned by women, and this year at Natural Products Expo West, they were promoting the #iBuyWomenOwned hashtag as a way of bringing awareness to women-owned businesses. That message is catching on among female celebrities, and Case sees it as the foundation of a movement in the making. “We’re definitely making not only our L.A. identity but being a women-owned brand a big part of our messaging,” she says. “It’s just important to lead by example. Women are the majority of the consumers, especially in the ice cream space, and it’s important to lead by example and create the opportunities.”

The new flavors offered in pints are the company’s most recent addition to its line, but Case has even more ambitious plans in the offing. Later this year, the company will offer four holiday flavors in pints: Brown Butter Gingerbread, Spiked Eggnog, Pumpkin Pie Cheesecake and Chocolate Peppermint Animal Cookies. Another seven flavors in pints will be coming out next year, although Case isn’t ready yet to reveal what those will be, and a whole nondairy line will also be coming out 2019, she says.

“It’s exciting that as you grow, you can introduce yourself as being more and more unique instead of diluting yourself,” Case says. “We’re more confident of our identity as we get bigger, so we’re able to be more and more unique, which is really exciting.”