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This is a
question pondered frequently by many in or starting out in the
frozen desserts business. Bill O'Hara of
Orbaker's in Williamson, New York
and Gary Frascarelli of
Gary's Ice Cream in East
Chelmsford, MA have some great insight:
"Usually your own formular would not be better than a quality mix
purchased from a reputable mgf. They have the resources to
compare various mixes and select the best. Plus, you need large
volume to have a special formular manufactured for you.
Unless you are big, buy a good product from the best available,
and spend your time on selling the product after you have made
the ice cream -- but not the mix.
Yes -- I am qualified to give this opinion. I was in the mix
business for 27 years (milk and cultured, too), and am a
graduate of Cornell University with a major in Dairy
Manufacturing."
Bill O'Hara
Entropy322@aol.com
President - Waverly Creamery, Inc dba
Orbaker's
FORMERLY - Vice President, Dutch Hollow Foods, Inc,
Honeoeye Falls, NY
FORMERLY - Wholesale Sales Manager - Crowley Foods, Inc,
Binghamton, NY
Formerly - Group Division Manager - Syracuse and Arkport,
NY, Crowley Foods, Inc.
Former President - New York State Retail IceCream
Manufacturers Assoc.
Former Instructor - Department of Dairy Industry, Cornell
University, Ithaca, NY
"You will need: refrigerated
storage tanks, mixing tank, aging tank, a pasteurizer, a 2-stage
homogenizer (you can get away with a single stage but a 2-stage is
always recommended), a rapid chiller, and all the necessary
temperature logging instruments. You will also need sources of:
bulk milk, bulk cream, corn syrup solids or liquid corn syrup, etc.
We looked into it a few years ago and the cheapest we could set up a
small scale mix plant (one that could produce 100 gals at a time)
was a little over $100,000 (and that was with mostly used
equipment).
Mix making is usually regulated and inspected by your state
department of agriculture (depending on what state you live in).
Smaller volume systems like the Carpegani that make very small
quantities of mix are around $20,000."
"We go through 50 – 100 cases
of mix (250 – 500 gallons) per week in the “high season” so one of
the small systems would not work for us. The largest of the machines
makes 60 litres which is about 15 gallons or 3 cases……a normal batch
day for us is 20 batches of ice cream (20 cases of mix). If
someone was able to get by with 3 cases of mix then they are doing a
very small volume of sales……and I can’t believe that it would be
cost effective to make their own mix. Of course you could always
keep making it all day – but how many batches can you make and cool
per day before the labor cost is prohibitive."
Gary Frascarelli
gary@garysicecream.com
Gary's Ice Cream
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