How ice cream actually gets made

0:00Aaron Butterworth:Welcome back to another episode of the Express Checkout Podcast. Today we have a very special episode for you. We're going to be trying some ice cream with somebody even more special. Aaron Butterworth, Senior Specialist Product Development for Haagen-Dazs. Welcome. Hi. Yes. Thanks for having me, guys. We're so excited. We're so excited. We're so excited. This is so much fun. Everyone knows Haagen-Dazs. we do often interview a lot of emerging brands. And so it's really fun to hear from a very ubiquitous, bigger company and to hear from the person who's actually developing the flavors. So Erin, let's kick off with a little bit about you.

0:45Who are you? How long have you been at Haagen-Dazs and what do you do there? All right. Very good. So I'll start by just saying, so I am just one person on a team of several product developers and also many people in operations and procurement, all different groups that actually bring Haagen-Dazs to life. But it's an honor to get to speak to you representing all of those folks. So I've been with Haagen-Dazs for about 22, 23 years. It is literally my dream job. Before I worked for Haagen-Dazs, I worked for other CPG companies. But when this opportunity came available, I was like, yeah, who wouldn't want to work for ice cream?

1:23In our group, we're based in Bakersfield, California, is where all the product development happens for the company. But we have several factories, two main ones that make Haagen-Dazs. And so what I get to do is I get to develop the products and then bring those to life in those factories that we manufacture the product in. And so right now, for instance, I'm in Maryland at one of our factories, working on some new product developments that are happening, getting close to launch and everything. So that's super high level. But yeah, it's just every day we make ice cream and it's spectacular.

1:56Aaron Butterworth:It does sound like a dream job if you ask me. It feels like one of those jobs that gets posted that's like, dream job alert, and it like goes viral and everyone who is fully unqualified applies to it. And they're like this, I need to do this. It almost doesn't feel like a real job, but it very much is. And so we're going to learn a lot more today about like the actual nitty gritty of your job. But I want to dig in a little more to what you just said. You were in CPG before. What were you doing before? And then what ultimately brought you to Haagen-Dazs? So I worked on canned fruits and vegetables for a big company.

2:35So I literally going from, it was great. I loved it. It was fun. But going from that to ice cream cannot compare. It just really can't. So for one thing, ice cream is very, very, you wouldn't really know this, but it's very complicated. There's so many different phases to it, you know, just in the science behind it versus canned fruits and vegetables. It's, you know, they're great. They're amazing. They serve a great purpose. But you're just putting fruit into a can. So, so this was like a real step up for me and just such a great opportunity to work on.

3:09Aaron Butterworth:So I think we're all curious. Could you walk us through flavor development from the actual idea to what it looks like on shelf? And what actually happens, how long that process takes, how many people are involved too? I have to imagine Hakandots has so many flavors and so many different products sold all over the world. Tell us what that looks like. Yeah, definitely. So our developmental cycle takes about a year, I would say, from start to finish. doesn't necessarily mean I'm working on a product every day for a year. We probably have about 20, 30 projects. And so just depending on where they're at in the phase of the project, a year is a good estimate.

3:52So how it starts, how it kicks off is our marketing partners, they'll give us a brief on what it is that they want to launch. And then we'll do, I'll set up like a brainstorming session with a cross-functional team. I like to include operations, quality, procurement, obviously the NPD, the product development team as well. And we'll get together and we'll talk about this brief. Usually the brief is like fairly high level, like they've given, they understand what kind of a product they want to launch and where they want to fit it within our portfolio. But we don't necessarily know at the time we get the brief, what the nuts and bolts are of what that product's going to look like.

4:32So in the brainstorming, what I like to do is sort of talk about what everybody, what each person on our team's vision of that product is. You know, if it's a cheesecake, strawberry cheesecake that we're doing, you know, is it going to be cheesecake ice cream with chunks of cheesecake? Or is it going to have graham cracker crust in it? Or is it going to have strawberry pieces or strawberry ripple? So we'll go through all those, take everybody's ideas down and sort of start to funnel them down into, well, what can we actually make, what fits with the brand image and what we're going for. And then we'll start to put it together on paper as a concept.

5:11So that's sort of like the first part of it, this brainstorming and just concept prototyping. The next thing that I'll do is I'll actually go from the paper into the lab and do what I call like an ice cream charcuterie. So I will -

5:28Aaron Butterworth:Yeah, feel free to invite us to that part of the process. That's amazing. Yes, I would love to. It's so fun. And it literally is, I'll take those initial ideas that we all brainstormed or what everybody was interested in seeing, and I'll pull together all the ingredients from our, I call it a pantry, but for all intents and purposes, we are a manufacturing facility. So from the warehouse, but my pantry for Haagen-Dazs, I'll pull all those ingredients together. So it might be, you know, graham cracker pieces, as I said, it might be a cookie crumble. It might be a cheesecake piece. So we'll have all of them literally laid out on our big island in our big kitchen island.

6:10And we'll have sauces. We'll have fruit pieces. We'll have the ice cream bases themselves because sometimes maybe we're exploring, is it cheesecake ice cream or is it sweet cream ice cream? Is it vanilla ice cream or is it strawberry ice cream? So we'll literally have all of those things out on a charcuterie board situation. And everybody comes together, stands around the table. We have a bazillion spoons and we're all mixing and matching, tasting, you know, a spoonful of this ice cream with this topping on it and maybe this sauce drizzled on it and sort of just, you know, getting through those initial ideas of what people had originally and trying to funnel it down into something that we'd like to take further into development this is literally a dream your job is like an ice cream party with a topping station like that's crazy it is it is and i mean i have to say it's tough when it's eight o 'clock in the morning you know you barely had your coffee but oh well it's a tough life you know there's coffee ice cream

7:14Aaron Butterworth:You could always just go that route. Yeah, I wore an affogato. Even better. So, like, obviously, I am envisioning myself in this scenario because how could I not? And my judgment would be like, this one I like and this one I don't. Like, what scientifically, I guess, are you looking for beyond just, like, these things taste good together? I'm curious. Yeah, what are the metrics of what makes a good flavor? Yeah, that's a very good question because it is actually very hard to make horrible ice cream. It really is. Almost everything tastes amazing. So yes, there is some science that goes into it.

7:49And in particular, because we're a manufacturing company, I have to develop things that our factory can actually run. For instance, you know, I'm going to keep using the cheesecake as an example because it's just top of mind because I just tasted that the other day. everybody loves like real cheesecake pieces but they are very very soft and delicate and operationally very challenging so as much and very expensive too real cheesecake very expensive so while I would love to put tons and tons of real cheesecake pieces in a concept I know in the back of my head that my ops team they have to actually manufacture that so in this brainstorming process.

8:32While we consider all ingredients at the beginning, when it really gets down to it, we have to look at, okay, can we run that? Is that going to, even if we can run it, is it going to look good in ice cream or is it going to get mushed up and then not make the consumer happy when they go and taste that? Is there a better way to actually deliver this ice cream to them? We might say, okay, let's put the cheesecake pieces to the side and let's do a cheesecake flavored ice cream instead, because we can pump in the cream cheese into the ice cream mix as we're pasteurizing it. And we'll have a nice, smooth, homogeneous sort of cheesecake flavored ice cream.

9:11And then we'll let the other inclusions and sauces really bring the whole concept together. Yes, it's definitely more than just mixing and matching flavors. At the end of the day, if I can't develop a product that the factory can actually run, it won't make its way to the consumers and nobody will get to enjoy it. So like, that's always very, very top of mind of what we can actually run. That's so interesting and makes a lot of sense. I feel like I've heard before that Ben and Jerry's they're known for their like larger chunks. And that was a really big hurdle. So it's interesting to hear the other side of that from a different brand.

9:47Yeah. And what I would say too, is, you know, there's some really, really great competitors out there, you know, I'm not going to knock them by any means. But where Haagen-Dazs sort of stands apart too, is that our ice cream, that's what we are, is we are an ice cream company. We really pride ourselves on making the best ice cream. And our philosophy and what I have really tried to maintain over these 20 some odd years is that the ice cream should stand alone. And those inclusions, the sauces, the cookie pieces, all those things should complement, not take away from the ice cream. And so I think that's where we really shine, where we really stand apart is we're trying to develop products where everybody still knows us for the ice cream and that it's amazing and that's the centerpiece.

10:31And then we're launching new flavors that are sort of leveled up a little bit with the addition of these different complementary inclusions and sauces.

10:40Aaron Butterworth:I know that Haagen-Dazs, when they launched, one of the big things was the higher milk fat percentage. That was what Rose and Rubin were doing the 60s in the Bronx. That's like, they looked at the ice cream market and were like, this isn't enough. And now obviously we have like a lot, there's a lot of other competitors who are sort of honestly doing that same premise. And that's exactly how they launched too. With all of the pints now, are they all still this high milk fat percentage? And also from the formulation standpoint, what hurdles does that cause having a higher milk fat percentage because a lot of the ice creams on the market are not technically ice creams as a lot of people like to say they're frozen dairy desserts which just means for our listeners with less than 10 percent milk fat i believe is the the current regulations it doesn't have the same standard of identity as true ice cream and it can have other components in it as well yeah right yeah so very good but um it's not it's not it's not not as creamy it's usually a little bit more aerated i find it's usually why it's i think also less than 10 but yeah does the higher milk fat percentage cause any unique formulation challenges compared to some of the other ice creams right yeah so i mean it's a little bit more finicky in terms of uh running it in a manufacturing possibly factory um you've heard of butter being churned well i can literally make hagen dazs flavored butter if i'm not careful all that butter fat when you put it i'll try that you should i know right oh my god we'll try the that needs to be on the market actually so yeah i would say that the high fat content it really does cause us to have to manage the ice cream making process a little bit more carefully more artisan some of the folks on our production lines have worked here you know 30 plus years and they are true craftsmen.

12:37They know how to run those freezers because it's not like your little home churn freezer. It is a giant continuous ice cream freezer. And, you know, definitely takes a little bit more care when you're working with something so high fat. You'll literally start to see chunks of butter form in the product if we don't run it properly and carefully. So we spend a lot of time. It's one of the things I'm doing out here in the Laurel Factory while I'm here this week is, you know, visiting with our operators and sort of helping them refine some of their processes and things like that so they can continue to make the best ice cream.

13:12The other thing that's really challenging, and people don't understand this necessarily as well, is that what makes us so special is what we don't put in as well as the quality of the ingredients that we do put in. But not putting in some of those ingredients like the gums and the stabilizers make it very hard for us to have a high overrun, which is not a bad thing. Having a low overrun, an overrun is air, obviously. It makes the product really rich and dense and creamy and everything. But even if I wanted to pump more air into it, I couldn't because I don't have those stabilizers in there. So that's one thing I like with Haagen-Dazs.

13:53You'll never have to worry about us like trying to make something that's 200 % overrun because I literally just can't do it. it won't hold that much air because it's it doesn't have those gums and stabilizers and there's nothing wrong with gums and stabilizers but it's not part of our brand ethos and just because of that I won't be able to get more um air in there even if I tried so interesting yeah it's fascinating I love how you were like overrun which obviously means no air when you first said overrun I was like they're making too much ice cream like

14:28Aaron Butterworth:we do have some ice cream manufacturers who probably listen to this but like so just to explain a little bit more so think about whipped cream basically whipped cream is not all that different than ice cream I mean we have a little bit more we have some eggs and things like that in there but to make whipped cream you're just whipping a bunch of air into it right to make it light and fluffy so that's very similar to what we're doing when we make ice cream with the combination of the other ingredients in there, the flavorings and the fruits and the, you know, chocolate powder and things like that caramel that we might be adding.

15:04But we're basically, if you have a gallon of mix, a gallon of milk, let's say, and you, you have a hundred percent overrun, you're literally pumping in a hundred percent, you know, twice as much air. You're ending up with 200 gallons of ice cream. So. So interesting. And I didn't know, I mean, it makes sense that gums and stabilizers, things that help with preserving the product would add more air, but I never thought about like, that's their role necessarily. Yes. They're giving body and texture and stability and structure that isn't, there's not necessarily enough structure in our, I hate to say in our pure recipe, but like, because it's just cream, sugar, eggs, milk, and whatever flavoring, it's as natural as you could possibly get.

15:52So if you want something else, which we're, we are never going to do, but if you did, that's, that's what, where the gums and stabilizers come in handy is they help give you that extra structure to help it hold for air and things like that. So. That is fascinating. I want to go back to your process because I know, I know you use the example of the strawberry cheesecake. We can move away from that example, but you described it as someone basically comes to you with a brief. Where does the brief come from? How did those, how did those ideas start? Is it coming from consumer insights? Is it like, Oh, this supplier has too much of this ingredient.

16:31So we got to make strawberry with it or whatever. Or is it just someone on the marketing team that's obsessed with this idea? What, what does that look like this ideation piece? And can you also give an example of a flavor that's out now? Yeah, definitely. Well, first of all, I will start by saying we never have too much strawberry. Never, never. And that's a whole nother story. I could tell you more about that. But to answer your question, I mean, we're all consumers, right? So really our briefs can come from anywhere. They do come from consumer trends. Quite often they do come from employees in our factories who maybe have a passion for a flavor.

17:10I mean, they're the frontliners, right? They've seen ice cream day in and day out for, like I said, 20, 30 years. So you would, you would be surprised how many times I'll walk into the factory and they're like, Hey, I got this great idea. So I'll always share those with the brand team too. A lot of times the ideas come from us looking at our current portfolio and seeing where do we have a gap? You know, we have lots of caramel, we have lots of chocolate, we have a few fruit skews, but we don't have indulgent fruit. So that would be the example that I think I'll share with you when you're going to try this product, I believe, which maybe if you want to hear in a second, we could grab it and taste it.

17:50So dark cherry truffle kind of came from us deciding or realizing that we had a gap in our portfolio. Like I said, we have some fruit skews. We have some chocolate skews. We have a lot of caramel skews because everybody loves caramel, but we were really missing this indulgent fruit skew. And it kind of came about because our brand philosophy is slow, take some time to savor the moment, really indulge in things. And so the dark cherry truffle is sort of it brings together, you know, a bright and rich cherry flavor with these really decadent chocolate truffle pieces that you just want to just literally savor in your mouth as you eat.

18:33Okay, well, now I do think we need to try it. So I'm going to go get mine. Nate, you can keep talking. Okay, yeah.

18:41Aaron Butterworth:I got mine next to me. I have a little cooler next to me with the products. I am so excited. Yes. I mean, I love cherry. I love cherry-flavored things. I love dark cherry. I love cherry with dark chocolate. Yes. I think cherry is such an underrated flavor that people are starting to gravitate to a little bit. Yes, exactly. And that's exactly why we came out with this one, because we had a cherry vanilla skew or we have a cherry vanilla skew and it's fabulous on its own, too. But it is a little bit different. And it was totally lacking that like that indulgence that you get from combining fruit with chocolate.

19:21So that's sort of kind of the spirit behind how this one came to be. Yeah, I'm so excited. I don't wait. Did you already talk when I was gone? Sorry about how dark, dark cherry truffle ice cream, as opposed to the cherry dark chocolate ice cream bars. we so we came out with those both at the same time they both launched this year so they kind of complement each other that's another sort of thing we like to do is if we have a great product in our packaged format we want to offer it in the snack format because we know consumers are eating on the go very often and they love the portion control of a snack item so where it fits we will try to come out with that skew across multiple platforms so it could be in mini cup it could be in the the 14 ounce it could be in the bars so it's definitely a little bit different of an execution in a bar format because we're we're not putting like the big chunks of things in the bar but it's it's equally right oh I'm so sure and I guess it would make sense like if a product includes chocolate in the pint format to put it in the bar format because it's coated in chocolate But I'm also curious, there are other brands and there are other ice creams that have ice cream companies that have a dark cherry truffle situation.

20:39When Haagen-Dazs is thinking about a flavor, I know you said the impetus for this one was that you needed like this more indulgent fruit flavor. How are you thinking about differentiating from others on the market at the same time? Right, right. So I like to call it thoughtful indulgence. So again, going back to what I was saying is that it's super important for us that the ice cream is always the star of the show. So we want to make an indulgent, but we don't want to jam it full of so much stuff that you lose the ice cream experience.

21:12Aaron Butterworth:Right. So we will go several iterations to try to get the right ratio of each component. So the right ratio of ice cream to the dark cherry truffle has a cherry sauce in it as well as the truffle pieces. So getting that ratio right. We don't want there to be too many truffles and then the truffle pieces overpower the cherry or vice versa. So it's all about getting the right balance in there so that the ice cream still shines, but that our consumers are still able to have this indulgent moment for themselves when they're slowing down in the evening and sitting there with their pint of ice cream.

21:51I love that. So the idea is not necessarily to ever like reinvent the wheel on flavor. It's more to create a higher quality version of flavors that are already out there. Exactly. This is how Haagen-Dazs does that similar concept that maybe you've seen from other folks. It's our take on it. And with the ice cream as the centerpiece. Yep. I love that. Nate, should we try it?

22:17Aaron Butterworth:Unfortunately, I think we have to try this ice cream. It's in front of me looking beautiful. And I'm so excited. I'm like sticking a spoon straight in there. There are those chocolate pieces. I'm trying to get one. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It is 1030. Actually, it's 11 now. And that makes this more acceptable. Yeah. It's fine. It's okay. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. I might use the time. I hope you'll notice that the ice cream, you know, it's rich and creamy. It is a little on the cold side because we don't have the gums and stabilizers. but very creamy, very smooth, melts very nicely in your mouth. And it doesn't.

22:58Melt so well. Yeah. And it's very clean. It doesn't coat your mouth with a bunch of gunky film stuff left over. And that you can really taste the flavors in it.

23:07Aaron Butterworth:Oh, yeah. It's a very balanced flavor. Like I can taste each and every thing that it says is in here. When you say it's a little cold, what does that mean? because I'm like yeah it's ice yes yeah that is it's a silly statement because all ice cream is cold because it's frozen but again going back to the fact that we do not add gums and stabilizers gums and stabilizers not only will help the structure of the ice cream help it hold that extra air we talked about but they also do fundamentally change the the um the texture and the perception of creaminess and temperature in your mouth. They're literally thickening agents, right?

23:52And so they will coat your mouth differently and they will make the ice cream taste warmer a lot of times than true real ice cream like this that does not have the stabilizers in it. So it shouldn't be, our ice cream should never be icy, but it will feel a little colder in your mouth because you don't have all those thickeners and stabilizers in there that like kind of coat and just sort of elevate that that temperature sensation in your mouth wow so interesting I didn't know any of it so cool there's an interesting contrast I would say but because you're saying cold like I'm hearing you but my experience of that isn't necessarily that it's colder I think because I've been having a lot of these non-dairy or like I guess diet ice creams lately, which are icy.

24:44And when I'm having those, they, I perceive them as colder actually, which is kind of interesting. Right. Yeah. Because a lot of times if, if an ice cream is icy, you'll literally feel that crunching. Which this doesn't have at all. It melts. Yes. Yeah, exactly. I know Haagen-Dazs had a non-dairy line at some point that has since been discontinued. I'm really interested in what that life cycle looked like. I imagine you were there from its start to its discontinuation. Can you tell us about that line? Right, right. Yeah. So, I mean, definitely when we came out with that, I think we were all starting to see that plant-based diets and everything were on the rise.

25:23And so as a, you know, as a big CPG, we want to get involved in that as well. We, you know, look, Haagen-Dazs is all about being authentic and intentional. So when we came out with a non-dairy, we knew we weren't going to try to be another almond milk based or soy milk based or, you know, whatever the case may be. There's so many great offerings out there in those categories, but we are an ice cream company. And so we wanted to stay as true to ourselves as we could while launching a non-dairy offering to try to give folks some options. And we already had some really great sorbets in our portfolio, the raspberry, the mango, really great offerings.

26:05And so I like to think that this offering, the non-dairy that we came out with, was sort of an indulgent sorbet. And it fits in the non-dairy category, but it's how, again, how Haagen-Dazs would do a non-dairy offering and be authentic. We had a peanut butter chocolate. That one was peanut butter based. We had a coconut caramel, and that one was coconut cream based. So again, trying to be authentic and true to ourselves, we made sure that every flavor that we launched in that category was made from that starting material. So peanut butter, coconut cream, the chocolate one was chocolate and cocoa powder based.