From The Summer 2005 Issue of Natural Grocery Buyer

Cool options for organic ice cream

Tyler Wilcox

When customers visit your frozen desserts section, they’re probably not hunting for something healthy. They’re looking for a pint of rocky road, a box of ice cream sandwiches or a carton of fruit-flavored popsicles—not exactly the kinds of products nutritionists think are healthy. But satisfying your customers’ cravings for both a decadent dessert and more health-conscious products is not impossible. Organic and nondairy frozen desserts are nothing new. But now they taste better than ever.

“Our products are as close to the real thing as possible,” says John Tucker, director of marketing and media relations for Turtle Mountain, a Eugene, Ore.-based producer of natural frozen desserts. “We believe that dairy products are the benchmark by which we should gauge the quality of our own products, and we’ve been able to meet and exceed consumers’ expectations regarding dairy-free products.”

Since 1990, Turtle Mountain has focused on developing dairy-free desserts, most notably the Organic Soy Delicious line of nondairy ice cream, the Soy Delicious Purely Decadent line of premium nondairy ice cream and the Sweet Nothings line of fruit-sweetened nondairy frozen desserts.

While some customers may find the very idea of a nondairy frozen dessert off-putting, some find the taste and consistency preferable to the real thing. Soy-based desserts don’t leave a film on the tongue and can be more refreshing than a rich, dairy-based dessert.

According to Tucker, nondairy frozen deserts are an excellent means to reach out to a relatively untapped group of consumers: the lactose intolerant, who soy advocates say make up nearly 15 percent of the U.S. population.

“We know that there are some 50 [million] to 60 million Americans who are lactose intolerant,” Tucker says. “So obviously one of the products such consumers tend to avoid is ice cream. [Stocking nondairy frozen desserts] is a real opportunity for organic growth for supermarkets. They can sell more ice cream products to a great amount of people who otherwise wouldn’t buy them.”

Several other organic and nondairy frozen dessert lines are now available for your freezer, including Imagine Foods’ Soy Dream ice cream and frozen desserts, Ben & Jerry’s Organic Ice Cream and Tofutti’s nondairy desserts.

“We’ve had a great deal of success in replicating the Ben & Jerry’s experience in our organic line,” says Elizabeth McDonough, associate new product manager for the South Burlington, Vt.-based ice cream maker. “Our aim is to stay true to our roots by using the best possible all-natural ingredients. The organics industry is such an important industry, and we want to support it in any way we can.” So far, Ben & Jerry’s has introduced four organic flavors: Chocolate Fudge Brownie, Vanilla, Strawberry and Sweet Cream & Cookies, all of which are made with certified organic ingredients. While the company has focused on selling this line mostly through natural foods stores, Organic Ben & Jerry’s has begun to appear in more mainstream outlets as well.

One of the newest additions to the nondairy frozen dessert world is Celestial Seasonings Tea Dreams from The Hain Celestial Group, a combination of Celestial Seasonings’ tea flavors with Rice Dream’s frozen desserts. The line includes Vanilla Ginger Spice Chai, Chocolate Caramel Chai and Cinnamon Apple Spice. All are lactose-free and contain no refined sugars.

The primary challenge for supermarkets is to make sure customers are aware of these rapidly expanding organic and nondairy frozen dessert options. Often, these products are exiled to the natural foods section, a place some shoppers might not visit. “Customers might think [the natural foods section] is too expensive or that the products stocked there won’t taste as good,” Turtle Mountain’s Tucker says.

The solution? Get these frozen desserts out of the natural products section. “We find that placing our products in the natural foods section of a supermarket is much less effective than placing them in the store’s ice cream section along with other dairy frozen desserts,” Tucker says. “We’ve seen far greater sales when that’s the case just because more people are likely to see the products.”

Some supermarkets may prefer to group all of their nondairy and organic frozen desserts in one section in their ice cream aisle, but doing so isn’t a necessity. These desserts hold their own against nonorganic and dairy varieties. “Our Purely Decadent line is often placed side by side with Ben and Jerry’s and Häagen-Daz because that’s the kind of product it is,” Tucker says.