Q: What is the secret for great ice cream?
A: There's no such thing as perfect ice cream, but it should taste natural and the flavors will hopefully come through. If you're having the Swiss orange chip, which is an orange-flavored chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips in it, the orange comes through after the chocolate. Then you bite on the chocolate chips to finish it off. That's what makes good ice cream - when people taste it and the aftertaste stays in their mouth.
And it should melt well. You want it to look like cream; you don't want it to look chunky on top and watery on the bottom. Q: Which are some flavors you don't use anymore?A: There are a lot of them. We had dill pickle and chardonnay. There were things that we made when we first started franchising. You would open a new Swensen's ice cream store and you wanted people to go home and say "this new store, you know what flavor it has? Dill pickle ice cream."
Who would ever buy that? No one, but you just told someone else about the store that opened down the block.
Q: What was the most important thing you learned from Earle Swensen, the company's founder, when it comes to ice cream?
A: He always said "never cheat a customer because you'll lose him." There are ways to cheat in ice cream. You can put more air in the product, for example. When you scoop ice cream, there are ways to scoop it so that's hollow. It looks great stacked on the cone but there's nothing in the middle.
He was for the customer. He listened to the customer. I can't say the customer is always right, but you listen to them. Especially if they have a complaint - if they take the time to tell you or write you a letter, you better address it.
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