Ice Cream as Performance Art: Humphry Slocombe
By Lorrie Baumann
The best ice cream tasted by this year’s sofi™ Award judges was Humphry Slocombe’s Black Sesame. It’s one of a dizzying array of flavors offered by San Francisco, California, entrepreneurs Jake Godby and Sean Vahey, co-Founders of Humphry Slocombe. Godby, a pastry chef by training, is also the company’s Chef, while Vahey, who has a background in food and beverage management, also serves as its Marketing Director.
The Black Sesame flavor includes toasted black sesame seeds with sesame oil added to amp up the flavor even more. The rest of the current lineup includes flavors like POG Sorbet, which combines passion fruit, orange and guava in a nondairy sorbet; Matchadoodle, an ice cream made with green tea from Kyoto and snickerdoodle cookies made in-house; Blueberry Boy Bait, which offers brown sugar streusel stirred into a blueberry ice cream and Dirty Chai, a chai ice cream with espresso in it. The adult-oriented flavors were Godby’s idea, Vahey says. “We didn’t necessarily pigeonhole it as ice cream for adults,” he said. “We just happen to have adult tastes.”
“I just don’t know how to do anything else,” Godby adds. “The ice cream that we make is to my taste. I just didn’t see the reason to duplicate what other people were already doing very well. We were very fortunate that there was a market for what we were making, but we were going to make what we do either way.”
The two originally founded their business in December of 2008 with the thought that what they were starting was going to be just a quirky little ice cream shop in San Francisco’s Mission District. “We’re just being ourselves. We’re lucky that people liked us. This was not test-marketed,” Godby says. “We had no clue that it would blow up the way it did. And it did — it blew up hot.”
It took the business partners two years of wading through bureaucracy and working with contractors to get their doors open, and on their opening day, there was still a sawhorse in their lobby, and Vahey was sweeping up sawdust off the floor. “Most ice cream stores are pink and they’re soft and they’re cute. We are not cute,” Vahey says. “There’s nothing about Jake or I that’s cute or adorable. We’re intense and in-your-face, just like the ice cream. When you came into our shop, you had an experience.”
Aside from skin cancer, prostate cancer is the most common cancer among buy cialis without prescription men and the second leading cause of annual cancer deaths, following lung cancer. Turn it on or turn it WAY up with cialis price online Vigorelle! Studies have conclusively demonstrated that human sexuality is psychologically driven. Not only is it considerably more sales online viagra expensive, these techniques of treatment are riskier, and so are resorted to merely in the event that anybody is experiencing difficulty identified with kidney and liver issue, then they should not utilize the solution by any stretch of the imagination. These three pills are used worldwide for curing levitra cialis viagra sexual troubles.
Vahey and Godby had eight flavors of ice creams in the case in those days, and they were rotating flavors every day. Customers could sample any or all of the flavors before committing to a whole scoop. “Every ice cream had a story, and that wasn’t happening anywhere,” Vahey says. “We were bringing you into our world.”
“We couldn’t keep up with the demand; the lines were getting longer and longer,” Godby adds.
One of the proprietors’ first surprises was their customer’s apparent fondness for strawberries. Their culinary approach to ice cream required fresh ingredients and seasonal flavors, and their customers were asking for strawberry ice cream in the dead of winter, when there were no strawberries to be found. Finally, when spring came around and strawberries came onto the market, Godby made the ice cream that so many had been requesting, and he called it Here’s Your Damn Strawberry, which is the name by which the flavor is known today at Humphry Slocombe.
The pair didn’t have any marketing budget, but social media was just getting under way, so they made the most of it with posts that created a sensory experience. “We were going to put our faces and our voices into our marketing,” Godby says. We were doing tons of image-heavy ice cream and food porn, and that resonated with a lot of people.”
Today, the packaging for their retail pints reflects that same desire to bring customers into the world of Humphry Slocombe. Packages include a little of Godby and Vahey’s story, and there’s a quote on every carton. “It’s about staying true to ourselves. …You’re still getting that experience. It doesn’t get lost in translation,” Vahey says. “Of course it’s super fun to come into our store, but we want you to have that when you pick up a pint of our ice cream too. At the end of the day, it’s about the ice cream. It’s a unique high quality ice cream that we want you to remember.”
Down a Georgia Road with Cheese
By Lorrie Baumann
CalyRoad Creamery’s retail shop in Sandy Springs, Georgia, is a key component in the business model that provides multiple revenue streams to keep Founder and Owner Robin Schick afloat while she exercises her passion for making artisanal cheeses. Her small creamery and its shop are located in a retail building in a commercial district at the heart of Sandy Springs, a suburb on the north side of Atlanta, Georgia.
Her business plan has three main components for producing revenue from her artisanal cheese production: the retail operation, which includes marketing events and classes as well as her shop sales; wholesale distribution to local foodservice establishments; and distribution to other regional retailers. She’s still working on the economics of a relationship with a wholesale foods distributor into retail that will be a key to real profitability, but she’s able to support her business with the revenues generated through the other streams. “We’re knocking on the door,” Schick said. “I think what we found is that it has to be a combination of revenue streams. We needed to develop the retail aspect — events with corporate team building in which companies bring in their staff and do a wine and cheese tasting or a class together. We do birthday parties here.”
CalyRoad Creamery really started a decade ago with a phone conversation between Schick and her sister Cathy Lynne, who was living on a 13-acre farm with some pet goats. “My sister and I were trying to decide if we wanted to work together and what we wanted to do, Schick says. “We were laughing and joking about milking the goats, and we got serious.” The two of them went to the University of Georgia’s Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development and asked them to do a feasibility study. With the university’s encouragement, Schick and her sister developed a business plan and then did some internships at local farms before heading off to the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese to learn how to make cheese. When they were ready, they found a goat dairy where they could launch their cheesemaking business with a 35-gallon cheese vat and a recipe for chevre while the farmer took care of the animal husbandry. “We quickly realized that there was no way we could learn both sides of this and do it well, so we concentrated on the cheesemaking,” Schick said.
As time went on, the farmer decided to retire from farming, the goat herd was adopted by another dairy, and Schick needed to find a new home for her cheesemaking operation. She decided to leave the farmstead concept behind in favor of a location closer to Atlanta’s urban market. CalyRoad Creamery found its new home in a small building about 60 or 70 years old on a side street in Sandy Springs, about 15 minutes north of downtown Atlanta. With 900 square feet of production space, 100 square feet of retail shop space and herself as the cheesemaker, Schick was back in business. “We had a very nice following in nine farmers markets and a nice following with wholesale into some of the white tablecloth restaurants in Atlanta,” she said. “We quickly realized that with a 35-gallon vat, we were never going to produce enough to make a living.”
That realization would be enough to knock the wind out of most women, and Schick was no exception. Then she had what she calls a “Little Epiphany,” which is now the name of one of her cheeses, a high-moisture, soft-ripened cow milk cheese with delicate floral notes that she’d just figured out how to make when she was at her most discouraged about the future of her business.
She’d just moved into the new production facility, and she was making cheese she loved, but with her tiny vat, she just wasn’t making money, she told her mom. Her mom asked her if she was actually losing money. Schick said no, she was covering her bills — she just wasn’t making a profit. “Then what’s the problem?” her mother asked. “Why are you measuring by money rather than by your experience that making your cheese makes you happy?”
Driving is a convenient way, usually drivers are male, often traffic jam occurs due to various diseases.Men with erectile dysfunction should be screened for other risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as high cholesterol high blood pressure and diabetes can http://icks.org/n/data/ijks/1482461379_add_file_1.pdf cialis prices help restore erectile function in many men. Experts say that it is very convenient to attain an viagra shops erection during sexual foreplay. Go ahead give yourself a practice test! discount levitra rx Drag and drop the emotional baggage that you’ve been toting around. 2. Gradually, limiting the alcohol intake and eventually quitting it can help them have children? canadian cialis generic http://icks.org/n/bbs/content.php?co_id=SPRING_SUMMER_2001 is known to improve vision.
“It was Christmas time, and I thought they were so right,” Schick said. “It was my epiphany that it didn’t matter. … That cheese is near and dear to my heart.”
When the two retail suites next to her small shop became available, she had to decide whether to expand or quit, and she decided to expand. She sold her 35-gallon vat and bought a 350-gallon cheese vat and a 700-gallon bulk tank for milk. She built a couple of new aging rooms into the additional space so she can make more cheese varieties. With a total of three aging rooms now, one is dedicated to hard cheese, one to blue cheeses and the third to white mold cheeses.
While in the 35-gallon vat days she was making chevre, a Camembert-style cheese called WayPoint, a feta, and a blue cow milk cheese called Bit O’ Blue, now she’s doing cheddar cheese curds and a tomme-style cheese called Hilderbrand that’s aged a minimum of six weeks, with some of her Hilderbrand inventory now at eight or nine months as she builds her stock for a big order from Delta Airlines.
She has WayPoint and several aged goat cheeses flavored with various spices in her white mold room along with Big Bloomy, a plain aged goat cheese and Black Rock, a pepper bloomy rind that was a 2018 finalist in the Flavor of Georgia Food Product Contest, which, according to the Georgia Department of Agriculture, is “the state’s premier proving ground for small, upstart food companies as well as time-tested products.”
Her cheeses also include Red Top, a flavored goat cheese rubbed with smoked Spanish paprika that’s named after Red Top Mountain, where iron ore was once mined and which is now a state park. Named, like most of Schick’s goat cheeses, for another famous Georgia landmark, Little Stone Mountain is an ash-rind goat cheese that’s a customer favorite.
David Rospond has joined CalyRoad’s creamery as Cheesemaker, Cheese Oracle Tim Gaddis is teaching a couple of classes a month on cheese pairing and cheese board selection in CalyRoad’s shop and Schick is busy dreaming of new cheeses that Rospond will help her make. “I taught him all that I knew, and now we’re both working together to learn more and more,” she said of Rospond. “He has just been a joy to work with. He fell right into it. … He knew how to read the recipes, and he knew intuitively what to do, which is great.”
American Cheese Society Celebrates 35th Annual Conference and Competition
More than 1,400 cheese and specialty food professionals are expected to attend the American Cheese Society’s (ACS) 35th Annual Conference & Competition, “Forged in Cheese” at The David L. Lawrence Convention Center, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 25-28, 2018. More than 2,000 different cheese products are expected to be judged in the world-renowned ACS Judging & Competition, with the top cheeses named best of show. The public can sample and purchase competition cheeses at the Festival of Cheese and Cheese Sale on Saturday, July 28, from 7:00 – 9:30 p.m. Proceeds from the Cheese Sale benefit the nonprofit American Cheese Education Foundation. Tickets can be purchased at bit.ly/CheeseFest18.
Acknowledged as the foremost educational gathering for the cheese industry in North America, the ACS Conference and Competition broke all previous records in 2017, with 2,024 entries of cheeses and cultured dairy products from 281 companies, a 10 percent growth over the prior year. Thirty-six U.S. states, four Canadian provinces, Mexico and Colombia were represented, with a similar attendance expected in Pittsburgh at the 35th Annual Conference.
“It’s exciting to see the growth of this event each year,” said Nora Weiser, Executive Director of ACS. “It is a testament to how strong the cheese community truly is. Cheesemakers, buyers, retailers, distributors – pretty much anyone who cares about making, selling and enjoying great cheese – comes together for education, networking, and camaraderie. Business gets done, connections get made and friendships get solidified. There is really no other professional industry event quite like it!”
The ACS Judging & Competition will take place over two days, with winners announced at the Awards Ceremony on Friday, July 27. A panel of internationally renowned judges will evaluate the entries for their aesthetic and technical merits. Last year’s best of show winner was Tarentaise Reserve from Spring Brook Farm /Farms for City Kids Foundation in Vermont. St. Malachi from The Farm at Doe Run in Pennsylvania was second, while third-place best of show went to Cellars at Jasper Hill’s Harbison. The 2018 winners will be highlighted at the Festival of Cheese on July 28, where conference attendees and the general public can taste competition cheeses while sampling craft beer, cider and specialty foods from artisan producers around the country.
Education plays a central role at the ACS Conference, including:
- Opening keynote: “Ignite Your Goals: Simple steps to accomplish more and accelerate your success,” presented by Gerry O’Brion, author of “What Big Brands Know.”
- More than 40 educational sessions geared toward cheesemakers, retailers and distributors.
- Sensory Deep Dive: “How Sweet Are You? The Science of Taste“ session with Russell Smith of Dairy Australia (one session offered each day).
- First-come, first-serve tasting sessions, including “Celebrating a Fermentation Renaissance,” “‘Drink the Apples – Eat the Cheese!” “Old and New Frontiers in Bandaged Cheddar” and “The Cornerstone Project: An American Original.”
- ACS Certified Cheese Professional® Exam
- Inaugural ACS T.A.S.T.E. Test™ (Technical, Aesthetic, Sensory, Tasting Evaluation)
- ‘Meet the Cheesemaker’: Conference attendees can meet and sample cheese and cultured dairy products from more than 100 producers
You can order discount cialis generic and get the delivery within one or two days you will notice a tremendous difference in your sexual power. The monopoly of regulating the tadalafil online price of their branded drug. Headaches from excessive reading, reading free samples of cialis in the dark, or staring at a television or computer screen for long periods of time, stress, cold climate, abrasions on the skin and even itching. Avoid diet rich in high fat content and take vegetable that have a good amount of antioxidants which increase low cost tadalafil amerikabulteni.com blood flow.
Registration for Forged in Cheese is available at www.cheesesociety.org.
