Cold Case for Ice Cream

Why frozen indulgences might warrant a more prominent place on quick-serve menus.

Contentious though it often is, there are a handful of things we can all agree on when it comes to the subject of food. The popularity of ice cream is almost certainly one of them. To wit, the market research firm Mintel has reported that more than 90 percent of U.S. households consume ice cream and other frozen desserts.

But like most indulgences, ice cream in its pure, premium form—with all the butterfat and sugar that make it so tantalizing—tends to leave American adults feeling a little conflicted. We crave its richness, but our society’s obsession with health, diet, and nutrition also forces us to reckon with the consequences of enjoying great ice cream to the degree we might like. No matter how you churn it, downing two or three pints a day just isn’t a good idea. Unfortunately.

So in order to reconcile our ice cream cravings with our calorie consciences, we compromise, often by turning to products made with low-fat dairy products and/or sugar substitutes. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has noted that light, low-fat, nonfat, and reduced-fat ice cream products, along with frozen yogurt, ices, sorbets, and sherbets, accounted for about one-third of the domestic frozen dessert market in 2006.

The alternative to eating lighter products, of course, is to enjoy smaller quantities of the really good stuff. To judge from a recent National Restaurant Association survey of culinary experts, this seems to be the track many Americans are now taking. In that poll, 1,300 members of the American Culinary Federation were asked to identify the most popular food trends from among a list of 194 items, including everything from red wine to sushi to energy drinks, pomegranates, fresh pasta, and couscous. At the end of the day, “bite-size desserts” emerged at the very top of the list, in the No. 1 spot.

If small indulgences that deliver big flavor constitute the trend of the moment, quick-serve operators might consider how they might tap into the phenomenon. Here are a few suggestions:

Smaller and Richer

I remember many years ago when I would to go to Bertillon Ice Cream where, for the equivalent of roughly $7 at the time, patrons would order a scoop about the size of a golf ball, served with a miniature wooden spoon. That worked out to about $5.50 per ounce, but this ice cream was worth every cent. With its authentic, intense, and perfectly balanced flavors; sumptuous, creamy texture; and lush mouth feel that made for a positively sublime experience, I would have anted up at least a few more francs for the privilege of another serving.

That’s ultimately why I believe that it might be a good bet for quick-serve’s more popular chains to begin offering small scoops of a proprietary, crave-inducing brand of premium ice cream in all-American flavors such as vanilla and peach. The results might be surprisingly tasty—and profitable. In a similar vein, Pasta Pomodoro might opt to sell small portions of authentic sorbet or gelato with Italian-inspired flavors such as bitter chocolate, coffee, hazelnut, almond, or espresso. And though they’re nowhere near as decadent, paletas—icy Mexican fruit pops made with fresh fruit, water or milk, and sugar—offer an engaging variety of textures and tastes, including tropical fruits, hibiscus, tamarind, avocado, corn, lime, and cucumber. At least a few of these could fare very well at the likes of Baja Fresh, Chipotle, or Qdoba.

Distinctive

One of the many smart moves Starbucks made on its way to turning coffee into a connoisseur’s pursuit was to market its various beans according to their region of origin and, within each region, in terms of distinctions such as color, sensory quality, and flavor.

As the rampant popularity of artisan ice creams attest, this technique could also be a powerful tool for marketing frozen desserts. With Americans increasingly interested in the source of their foods, a decision to use Oregon hazelnuts, Georgia peaches, or Madagascar vanilla in frozen desserts could offer a halo of quality and uniqueness in addition to a novel taste profile. Vosges Haut-Chocolate, the upscale chocolatier, takes this practice to exceptionally exotic lengths with such ice cream flavors as curry and coconut custard and Mexican ancho and chipotle chiles with Ceylon cinnamon and dark chocolate. The selective use of specific ingredients bearing upscale brand names can achieve a similar effect—a Scharffen Berger chocolate shake, say, or perhaps a Dole fresh-fruit citrus popsicle would be great in a quick-serve setting.

Novel Thinking

If you remember what it felt like to run for all you were worth after the ice-cream truck on a hot summer afternoon, you remember how fun those classic ice-cream novelties were. Good Humor pops, push-ups, chocolate-covered bananas—we all had our favorites. But today, these novelties look attractive for a different reason. Being relatively small—anything too big to fit on a stick is instantly disqualified—they are perfectly portion-controlled. And given a bit of an up-market makeover, they could represent a nice new niche for some enterprising chain.

A sandwich concept, for instance, might offer a line of truly premium ice-cream sandwiches in a variety of creative, regional flavors—a Vermont maple-walnut variety or a Maui pineapple sorbet sandwich. This would fit nicely with the ongoing retro-treat trend that has given rise to concepts such as New York’s Shake Shack and to the classic milkshakes always on tap at Jack in the Box. Asian concept Pick Up Stix could even experiment with frozen yogurt sticks boasting the hip flavors of the moment like green tea, now available at the likes of Pinkberry and Red Mango.

The important thing is, at a time when ice cream is hotter than ever, we must not let our frozen-dessert brainstorming go cold.