What led you down the ice cream path?
It was a bit of a circuitous path for me, I suppose. I was in technology for five or so years, right out of school. After a while, I was getting a little stagnated. I started to question some things and make some big shifts in my life. I decided to leave tech and travel for a year. My now-business partner Drew’s daughter lives in New Zealand, and I went to a dinner party at his house. He asked me what I was doing with my life. And I said, ‘You know, I’m going to go travel in New Zealand.’ He said, ‘You’ve got to try the ice cream when you’re there!’
He was really effusive about it. I’m thinking: I’m going to New Zealand, but I’m not thinking about ice cream. I had a whole list of plans and things I wanted to do. Ice cream was probably at the bottom of the list. But I kept it in the back of my head. I went to New Zealand for about four months, working on farms. Every couple of weeks, I’d go to a different farm. I was having a blast, and I ended up in this town and saw a sign: ‘Real fruit ice cream served here.’ So I went in and tried it, and I absolutely loved it. It was so unique. For the rest of my trip, in different towns, it was so quintessential New Zealand. In one town, they grow blueberries, and they would have blueberry real fruit ice cream. The next town would do strawberries at a little farm stand or bakery. I didn’t see any real fruit ice cream stores. It was farm stands — it was very New Zealand, very quaint.
Drew works with a lot of businesses and startups, and I think he was interested in starting his own business. The goal has always been to scale this to a national brand and an international concept. That was the challenge he put in front of me coming right back from travel. I always wanted to start a business. I’d known Drew for a while. It was a no-brainer. It’s been the best decision of my life thus far.
For the uninitiated: Why is this ice cream different?
It’s super simple. I like to think of it as greater than the sum of its parts. We get really good ice cream, sourced from Maple Valley Creamery, a dairy farm in Western Massachusetts. We have a really good relationship with the farmer there, who has come all the way out from Western Mass to drop off ice cream on hot July days.
We take premium ice cream and individually quick-frozen fruit, picked at the peak of freshness. It’s flash-frozen; otherwise, it comes out very soupy. And then we use a mixing cone machine from New Zealand, mixing a scoop of ice cream and a scoop of your favorite fruits. We also do premium mixing: toasted coconut flakes, dark chocolate flakes. We do sprinkles, because it’s a crowd favorite.
When it churns together — we churn to order — each one comes out as this colorful, beautiful, soft-serve swirl with the premium richness of a full-fat ice cream. So it’s really just a wonderful, unique experience. And each fruit provides a different structure and volume to the ice cream that’s just really quite lovely.
How would you describe your customers?
During the day, it’s a lot of families in Brookline. We have a lot of regulars who come in every single day with their kids after school, which is lovely, because we’ve gotten to know a lot of people. Brookline has been a really great, accepting community. We get a lot of college students. We have a great brand. We put a lot of effort and emphasis into it; we have a great marketing team. So we get a lot of people who are hearing about us through social media, and they want to come and try it for the first time, and they fall in love with it.
At Time Out Market, in the daytime, we see employees who work in the area. We’re seeing a lot of Fenway Park-goers, a lot of college students as well. You know, it’s a mixed bag, and we’re still learning about our demographic. But everyone loves ice cream.
Any early ice cream or childhood food memories?
You know, I’ve always wanted to have my own business. To put myself through school, I had a landscaping business. … My brother went to culinary school, and I became enamored with restaurants. This is a crazy thing to be telling a reporter, but the one thing I said was that I’d never start a restaurant. But then it fell into my lap, and it has been such a wonderful, wonderful experience. The industry itself is full of people who are looking to help. There’s never been a time when I’ve been turned away by someone in the industry, from asking them a question. I knew nothing. I still know close to nothing, but I’m getting more and more knowledgeable by the day.
What advice would you give to someone who’s leaving what seems like a secure job and going into something that feels risky? How were you able to do that?
It’s so cliché, but: Trust your gut. What was happening with me was, I saw the direction of my life as if I had no control over it. I saw where it was going, and what was happening, and it just wasn’t really what I wanted. There was kind of a juxtaposition of what I thought I wanted out of my life, but every step I was taking seemed to get me further away from that. I kept convincing myself that it was too late for me to do this. I was 27, which is hilarious, but: ‘It’s too late for me to travel.’ When I started to take those steps and go against that grain, there was a lot of friction, but in my gut, it felt like the right move. I was unhappy and unhealthy. I wasn’t tremendously overweight or anything like that. I just wasn’t treating my body well. I started to eat better and do more yoga and exercise more and listen to my body, which led to me traveling.
There was an equation that I used: Discomfort plus analysis leads to growth. I did two months in a Buddhist monastery; most of that was completely silent. I did over two months trekking the highest mountains in the world. I had never ridden a motorcycle before, so I bought one in Vietnam and went from the southern end of Vietnam to all the way up to the Chinese border. That was really challenging. I was on a sailboat for a couple months. It was just completely organic and completely driven by my gut. And every bit of it has gotten me to where I am now.
Now that you’re closer to home: What are your favorite restaurants in the area? What are your go-to spots when you’re not working?
Great question. There’s a place in Needham called Sweet Basil. It’s BYOB, no reservations, super quaint. That’s kind of nostalgic for me because I grew up in the area [in Sherborn]. If I’m going out with the team: Hojoko. It’s one of our co-brands at Time Out. They have nailed the concept of a Japanese tavern, and it’s just fun and different, and the food is delicious. I love Eastern Standard. And I like the new restaurant as well. I think that they just do the French brasserie concept really well, and the cocktails are great. Lotus Blossom in Brookline, and Prairie Fire in Brookline, I really like. And the cocktails are great. If you’re looking for decadent pasta, no frills: Daily Catch or a shout-out to our neighbor in Brookline, Club Dante. It’s one of the best-kept secrets in Boston. It’s so unassuming. You walk in there, and everything you eat is incredible.
Favorite foods or restaurants growing up?
We would go out as a family every Sunday night, and it’s something I’m very grateful for now. There were four boys, and my parents, every Sunday night, would pack us into a car and take us to a nice restaurant, which is absurd to me at this point. God bless them. I’m very grateful for it. There’s a restaurant called Oga’s in Natick on Route 9, and it’s still in existence. To this day, past the nostalgia thing, it’s some of the best sushi and Japanese food in the Greater Boston area. We would go there, legitimately, every single Sunday.
This is going to sound kind of strange, but my mother used to make this swordfish with an anchovy and caper sauce for my birthday, and it was outrageously good. I haven’t had that in years. And my grandmother is 100 right now. She’s still cooking for us! She makes traditional red sauce meatballs, sausage, and spaghetti. No frills. She’s not skimming the oil off the top of the red sauce; we put it that way. It’s a lot of fat, but it reminds me of her and reminds me of growing up, and I love it.
What was your favorite ice cream place as a kid?
C&L Frosty’s was the one in town, in Sherborn, due to proximity. I would probably say Ben & Jerry’s. There was one, I think it still exists, on Route 9. We’d go out to the movies or to dinner and get Ben & Jerry’s afterward. That might be a copout, but this is before they were acquired by Unilever. I imagine it was a little bit more niche when I was growing up.
Do you have a food vice?
Sour gummy candy. It is going to put me in the grave. I do better with it recently, but I will go on these benders where just, at night, I’ll have a big bag of Haribo sour gummy bears. I don’t know what it is. But there’s just something about it. In my most hedonistic moments, I’m just grabbing a pack of sour gummy candy.
In terms of food vices, I’m mostly plant-based; I’d say probably 98 percent. We don’t keep meat in the house. If I go out to dinner, I might eat a little bit of meat. Again, nothing crazy, but just chicken tenders or a fried chicken cutlet or some kind of schnitzel. There’s just something about the breading done really well.
What’s your favorite ice cream flavor of all time — and your least favorite ice cream flavor of all time?
Wow, what a question. Can I get two favorites, because I’ve got to give a nod to Far Out? At Far Out, it changes regularly. We just added cherry to our recurring menu. It’s one of the fruits you can always get in Brookline; you can’t get it at Time Out. And a chocolate cherry with brownie bits and a salted caramel drizzle is ungodly good. You put your head in your hands; it’s so good. And this is discontinued, but Ben and Jerry’s had this Dave Matthews Band flavor. It was chocolate raspberry brownie. There was probably something else in there, because they put a million things in their ice cream, but that was so good as well.
There a lot of esoteric things going on in the ice cream world today. Salt and Straw is a brand we look up to. They do pints of the month subscriptions, and they’ll put out some really funky flavors like mac-and-cheese ice cream or blue cheese ice cream. You name it; there are some funky things they’re doing. I wouldn’t say I would never try it. I have a pretty open palate. I think, if a bunch of people like it, there has to be something to it? I’ve had some crazy things while traveling in Iceland or in Japan.
Interview has been edited and condensed.
Kara Baskin can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @kcbaskin.
