IFE 2024: Jefferson’s Ice Cream to launch American-style “Sammies”
09 Apr 2024 | Jefferson’s Ice Cream
Premium artisan UK ice cream brand Jefferson’s is launching its ice cream Sammies, made with homemade cookies, organic milk and other natural ingredients to bring a contemporary twist to old-fashioned American-style ice cream. It is extremely creamy, bursting with flavor and novel inclusions. We caught up with co-founder Celine Thompson to find out more.
This is Liz Green at IFE Manufacturing in London.
I'm here today with Celine Thompson, who's a co-founder of Jefferson's Ice Cream.
Hi Celine, good to see you, thanks for joining.
So the company are presenting a new product today at the show.
Maybe you can start by telling us a bit about the product and how it came about.
We're really excited to launch our Sammy, which is an ice cream cookie sandwich.
We've been selling.
These cookies for the last 3 years, as a build your own and now today we're launching a boxed product and we have 2 today.
One is the strawberry days and the other is the chocolate rookie crumb.
Nice.
So you originally were, kind of specializing in the ice cream indulgence space.
How did the company come about in the first place?
We started the business 5 years ago.
I've been making ice cream for about 10 years because my son had a dairy intolerance when he was little and I started making cookies and ice cream and lots of yummy things for him because they weren't readily available in the shops.
And then it got kind of a little bit successful in my local area and I decided to quit my job and my husband and I decided we'd start an ice cream business.
Nice.
So you're really.
Into the kind of sophisticated, convenience, premium kind of dessert space, would you say that's correct?
Yeah, it's definitely the luxury premium end of ice cream and it's made with natural organic milk, really good quality ingredients and no artificial flavors or colors.
So it's not novelty, it's not whimsical, but it's really excellent quality and we make a new.
Flavor every single month.
So we're really big on research and development and we try to bring new flavors all the time.
Nice.
So what are some of your flagship flavors that you've got currently and what has the response been to them?
I think rookies and cream is probably our most popular.
We introduced that as a monthly flavor.
It's a brownie cookie, that we took from America and we've blended up into the ice cream with toffee and we kept that on because.
Customers just absolutely loved it.
So I'd say that's probably the most popular at the moment.
Nice.
So you've just launched the the cookie sandwiches.
Are there any plans to expand the range and the products?
Obviously you mentioned that you create a new product every month.
Yeah, definitely we're we're always looking at new flavors, new combinations.
I think when customers come in and say, could you put that with that, it gives us inspiration all the time.
So yes, definitely.
OK, fantastic.
And what is the importance of you as a British company, as a London based company of you being here today at the show in London?
I think it's really important just to showcase everything that is great and food produce in Britain at the moment.
I think it's a really exciting space to be in, in food and hospitality.
And I think it's really important that we're actually using natural ingredients and 70% of all the ingredients that we use.
Come from the UK, which is terrific.
A bit more on the ingredients.
A lot of companies come in under scrutiny for having unsustainable supply chains.
How do you ensure that all the ingredients that you are using and sourcing are sustainable?
The first thing is we speak to our suppliers.
We try to engage as much as possible and we do our research.
We don't take on a new company unless.
They're they're ethical unless they're sustainable.
Things like palm oil, we actually ask the questions upfront.
Not that we use palm oil in particular, but if that happened to be an ingredient, then we'd ask that question.
But 70% of nearly all of our products is organic milk, which comes from the UK and we know the dairy, which is terrific.
So already you're 70% of the way there.
That's great, Celine.
Thank you very much for speaking to me.
