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1 3 June 2018 SNACKING NEWS Creative Chill from Coolhaus fers salted Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream with shoestring french fries and milk choco- late malt balls, while Midnight Munchies of- fers chocolate peanut butter ice cream with chocolate-covered pretzels and peanut butter cups. Buttered French Toast Ice Cream, which suggests the possibility of either hav- ing 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 discov- ered that they shared interests in both architecture and ice cream. Case's back- ground is in architecture and design, while Estreller had a background in real estate development. The two of them started bak- ing cookies that they built into ice cream sandwiches that they saw as a kind of edi- ble 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." 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 in- spired 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 desti- nation," Case says. "New York was an ob- vious 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 enter- tainment industry, Case says. "Culver City we really liked because it's really central. There's a rich history of arts and entertain- ment 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 hap- pening in Culver City." Coolhaus has con- tinued 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 ex- ample. Women are the majority of the con- sumers, 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 in- troduce 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." n Willy Wonka Rides Again BY LORRIE BAUMANN If you've ever wondered who'd be cast to play you if Hollywood ever decided to make a movie about your life, you certainly aren't alone. Brent Davis doesn't have to wonder: Hollywood already made "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," and in the version of that movie that Davis prefers, Gene Wilder played the wildly whimsical and endlessly inventive master of the chocolate factory. Davis is the President of Davis Chocolate, a company primarily devoted to making pri- vate-label chocolate products for other com- panies. If you need a gluten-free, Paleo-certified chocolate chip for your spe- cialty trail mix snack or you need a single-origin bar sweet- ened with coconut sugar and named after your company, he's the man who can do that for you. "They tell us what they want, and we help them get what they need," Davis says of his cus- tomers. "We specialize in mak- ing custom recipes." The products made in his fac- tory include truffles, chips, chunks and bars – chips and chunks often for the baking in- dustry and many of the truffles for cus- tomers who demand organic certification. "There's not many organic truffle makers out there," Davis observes. Another of his specialties is products that include peanut butter – an ingredient for which he has such a particular fondness that he's even created an inside-out peanut butter cup bar, with chocolate in the middle and the peanut butter on the outside. "We create lots of different products that are out there that are unique. I like to create different things," he says. "Peanut butter is a weakness of mine, and it goes very well with chocolate." Wine also goes very well with chocolate, and Davis Chocolate is now also making Wave Chocolate Sticks for Wine Pairing. These are artisan chocolate cocktail sticks for pairing with wine and cocktails. They're certified organic, kosher, and vegan. They're made from single-origin chocolate from Ecuador, which Davis feels is a chocolate that pair exceptionally well with wine, and include only three ingredients: organic cacao, organic sugar and organic cocoa but- ter. "What we did was match up the sugar levels so that they match a wider variety of wines," Davis says. One of the reasons he picked chocolate to eat while drinking wine, he says, is "because it's fun to drink wine." Davis has been thinking about chocolate since he was about six years old, although in those days, he'd often take a pass on a choco- late bar in favor of a plate of macaroni and cheese. The problem with the chocolate bar was that if he bought the bar while he was out and about on his bicycle on a hot summer day, he knew that he'd have to eat all of it right away before it melted. He didn't want to buy a chocolate bar and eat it all at once – he wanted to be able to save some of it for later. Today, when he has to pinpoint the mo- ment that he started thinking about how to make a different kind of chocolate, that's the memory that comes to mind, and it explains why he has even invented a liquid chocolate bar. "If I had a liquid candy bar, I would have bought this as a kid because then I could eat it anytime I wanted," he says. He's still doing that kind of thinking, now often starting with the thoughts that his customers bring to him. They might ask for chocolate sweetened with coconut sugar because they're looking for a low glycemic index – that's a request that Davis is getting fairly frequently these days. "Most of our private label customers come to us with new ideas. We may not know, but, 'Let's see what we can do for you,' ... We need to be very diverse," he says. "One of our specialties is using peanut butter or chocolate chips with coconut sugar.... Or Paleo – there's a lot of different requests we have. Plus, it's fun to create things and to stay busy too, of course." n BY LORRIE BAUMANN Premium ice cream brand Coolhaus is get- ting set for summer and launched seven new ice cream flavors and three new ice cream sandwich varieties this year at Nat- ural Products Expo West. The new ice cream flavors will be available in pints and include Milkshake & Fries, Street Cart Churro Dough, Midnight Munchies, Farm- ers Market Strawberry Cheesecake, But- tered French Toast, Chocolate Love and Best of Both Worlds Vanilla. The three new ice cream sandwich vari- eties are That Dough Though Ice Cream Sammie, Gimme S'mores Ice Cream Sam- mie and Birthday Cake Ice Cream Sam- mie. That Dough Though combines chewy chocolate chip cookies and cookie dough ice cream, Gimme S'mores combines gra- ham chocolate chip cookies and marsh- mallow graham ice cream, and Birthday Cake offers a sugar cookie with sprinkles and cupcake frosting ice cream. The flavors as well as their names rep- resent the women-owned company's phi- losophy 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 ex- pressing our values. ... We're always, al- ways 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 of- Photo credit: Vito Palmisano