Ice cream obsession turned ice cream career.
For our third episode of Marco Labs, we’re chatting with Alec Jaffe of Alec’s Ice Cream. Alec’s Ice Cream is dedicated to making the ice cream that you deserve — ice cream made with hyper-local and high-quality ingredients that’s also super delicious. Hear about how his ice cream obsession began, how he started an ice cream brand after a software career, and his record for how much ice cream he’s eaten in one sitting.
Key takeaways
- Treat yo’self — you deserve it. As Alec says, “in a complicated world, we’ve made things seriously simple. Ice cream should taste great and leave you feeling even better...” When you’re going to indulge (and you should), indulge with something that you love.
- Sometimes, you just need to take the jump. Alec knew he wanted to try his hand at entrepreneurship — whether through a sock company or ice cream. He left a secure job to pursue his passions of entrepreneurship and ice cream and hasn’t looked back since. Sounds familiar :)
- Make it stand out. Find a niche like a combination of a commitment to natural and organic high-quality ingredients, coupled with a unique approach to developing unique flavors.
Rather read than watch?
We’ve included a transcript of this episode below.
Suman:
What's up? Hi everyone. I am Suman CEO and co-founder of Marco. Marco is an experiences platform that helps companies and teams find best in class experiences with super unique hosts, brands, creators. And this is the third episode of Marco Labs where we talk to the people that are on our platform because their stories are way cooler.
And so, who we have here today is Alec, who is the founder of Alec’s Ice Cream, which is delicious. And I haven't eaten today. I've just literally been eating his ice cream. And so, probably get some dietary advice later. But first, dude, I want to kick it over to you. I'd love for you to share a bit about who you are, how you got into creating an ice cream company, as a west coast guy from who, you know, worked in tech.
But now here we are with your ice cream.
Alec:
Yeah, totally. My name's Alec, really happy and excited to be here. So I started making ice cream back in elementary school, I actually taught myself how to make ice cream for a class project, where we had to make something at home and bring it into class to present.
And so being an ice cream loving kid, I decided, I'm going to teach myself how to make ice cream. So I got a little countertop ice cream maker and just went to work, made some ice cream, and brought it into class. People loved it. And instead as a hobby growing up and fast forward to after college, I was shopping in the grocery store and kind of noticing my ice cream options really going in two different directions.
One being that traditional brands that really didn't focus on sustainability, didn't have the cleanest label with ingredients, and tasted good, but you don't feel good after. And then the other option was more. Newer brands that were kind of focused more on functionality and health, but really you sacrificed on taste.
And so for me, I was like, this isn't really meeting my needs with it either. And I want something that tastes incredible. Like I'm eating ice cream. I want something incredibly delicious. You gotta know you deserve it.
Suman:
You know, I think you deserve it.
Alec:
Exactly, exactly. But then at the same time, I wanted to feel good about the ingredients. Have organic sustainable ingredients, and things like that. You know, things that I cared about, really with the products I buy. And so I just started, went back in the kitchen and started working on different recipes and just making ice cream for friends and family, people really loved it. And eventually we got really lucky and found this small ice cream factory in Sonoma county that we moved into in the beginning of 2010.
And just got the production line back up and running, starting to source from local suppliers. So we get our dairy from some pasture raised family farms, just 15 minutes away from our factory. So we're just hyper-local with our sourcing and trying to find really high quality suppliers, and then launched in November of 2018.
Suman:
Just like, first of all, it sounds like you're what you're into is bribery. Cause you're like, oh, I had a hobby, but I just made ice cream and games. So TV, they were your friends because if you are the ice cream, I'm not really sure about that. It sounds suspect, but I mean, you were running back at USC, right?
You don't strike me as someone who's like, that guy loves ice cream, you know? So how did, I mean, did you always love ice cream or what?
Alec:
I did. I always loved ice cream. I mean, I can think like some extremely strong childhood memories after every basketball game getting to go to Baskin-Robbins for ice cream after the game, and this is my family too, like we always had ice cream in the house, it was kind of our dessert of choice.
Our freezer was always stocked full of ice cream and it was just what we would do after dinner. And so there is that part of me that loves ice cream, we just always had it around the house. And food is a big part of my personal life and my family life. But then also being an athlete, playing college football, like really being diligent about my nutrition and paying attention to what I'm putting into my body.
And so the reason why our ice cream, the way we made it, is like, if I'm going to have ice cream and I want to have dessert, I want to be able to enjoy to the maximum potential of that moment. You know, if I'm going to have ice cream, I want the real thing. I want really delicious ice cream.
And so that was what inspired me to make this a really premium ice cream recipe.
Suman:
And, so when you decided, you say you moved into a factory, right? Did you just quit your job? Was it a moment where you were like, this is it I'm doing it and you just kind of went full bore or was it, hey, I'm going to test this out and then experiment and then ease into it.
Alec:
Yeah. So it was kind of like moving into the factory was a little bit further down the road of that, like leaping off the cliff moment of diving in. So I was working at a tech startup. The startup just was sort of not doing that well. And, just the people bluntly. And so I was figuring out what I wanted to do next.
And, I started just experimenting with a bunch of different ideas, both in software and in CPG food and just like playing around with just making different products. And I just naturally just fell into like, I really enjoy making ice cream. And like you're saying, it's like, dude, I just love the first time you can bring ice cream, anybody, and they'll be happy and they'll be stoked that you're bringing them some ice cream.
And so it's just really fun. And I kind of fell back in love with working in the kitchen and making food for people. And, so I just decided, all right, I'm gonna try this. And then we spent a while perfecting the recipe and figuring out how we're going to make the product. Like, are we going to start an ice cream shop?
Are we going to work with a co-packer for them to make it for us? And then we got super lucky and found this factory. It just allowed us to have so much control over our sourcing and the suppliers we work with and the quality control like it's myself and my brother are the rest of our really small.
On the production line, you know, in terms of taste, I'm personally taste-testing pints throughout the production process, making sure that they're up to quality, which is a really tough job that I enjoy. Yeah.
Suman:
You guys gotta be sarcastic, right?
Alec:
But actually, they actually are pulling pints off the line and making sure there's chocolate chips in our mint chip, you know, it's like those kinds of things that you, if we were like shipping this production out to another person, we wouldn't have that kind of control.
And we got really lucky in falling into this opportunity.
Suman:
So going to talk about ice cream, obviously when we're talking about flavors and all of a sudden, but I think we should just jump in. So I've got an Alec Ice Cream in front of me right now, and I'm just going to read your mind if I just read the back of your ice cream thing, even if it's a bit long.
So whether it's a pick me up treat yourself or a nice cherry on top, there are a million moments that call for ice cream. So we decided to craft the perfect organic treat. They compete with everything life's happy life has to offer. And then it goes on. Uh, you talk about Sonoma Marin county and I liked the last part.
It had a complicated role. We take things seriously. Simple ice cream should taste great and leave you feeling even better. So for whatever life throws at you, kick back at pat likes, Alec Ice Cream and scoop into bliss. Alec Jaffe found it signed by you. So let's start, let's see if this is actually good.
You know, I know it's good. So it's actually not a test I mean, it’s pretty damn good. So this is, so let's talk about flavors. What are you doing?
Alec:
Love it. I'm actually also eating our honey blueberry lavender.
Suman:
Perfect. So we're on the same page or the same point? Yeah, that was bad. It's a bad direction.
But we're gonna roll with it. So what, tell me about, how'd you come up with this flavor? What is this flavor? It's pretty unique. It's funny, honey butter, blueberry. Lavender.
Alec:
Yeah. We're really the only, we're the only company that I've seen doing this specific combination of flavors. And so the way we came up with this flavor is really, it's really not that like, I wish there was some really cool, like, you know, tortured genius moment, but it was really just like we were thinking about what flavors work really well together, starting with kind of the base flavor.
What do we want to do? So lavender was the sort of initial inspiration we want to make a lavender flavor. Okay. Then how can we make lavender really great when we're thinking about flavors. A philosophy of how, of what we want an Alec Ice Cream flavor to look like and feel like, and tastes like, what does it sound like?
What does it sound like? And I don't know, it sounds like honey blueberry, lavender, you know, it sounds like this elevated, but simple culinary innovation, you know, it's not a name throwing. Like the actual name.
We haven't cracked how we can get our ice cream to speak to you, but maybe we'll get there soon.
So yeah, you know, it's this, these culinary innovations that are simple and they're simply made, but they're delivering really strong, unique flavors. Yeah. And so then we added the honey, which is a pretty common addition to lavender, and then we wanted to just take it to that next level. And adding the blueberry just adds a really nice tartness and acidity that just brightens it up a little bit. And, yeah, I love it.
Suman:
You sound like a song, right? You're the way you described the ice cream and you're not messing around. Find the blueberry. And then, so then a little bit about, so the locally sourced ingredients, right?
So it's indulgent, but it's good stuff, right. It's ingredients that are premium. Are they organic or what's the quality?
Alec:
Yeah. So all of our ice cream is certified organic, which means all of our ingredients are organic. And so we're working with really high quality suppliers.
The dairy. The most important one that's the most, I mean, that's the biggest reading that we're using and also responsibly raised cows and dairy that whole production process when done the right way. It really makes a difference in the quality ofmilk that we're working with. And it's just going to be, you're going to get a better finished product.
You're going to get a better ice cream out of it. Working with fair trade, sugar suppliers, fair trade chocolate and cocoa, working with real Brazilian coffee for our salted caramel, and finding these suppliers that are doing things the right way. So that’s us as a new company, just starting out, you know, we're not all the way there with how we want to be sustainable.
We have really big goals, five or ten years down the line of where we'll be, but we're doing everything we can to get there and to get to that end goal. Be the best we can. So these suppliers,
Suman:
This Brazilian supplier, how do you find, how does one find the supplier or whatever it is for each type of category of ingredients?
Alec:
Totally. So we're obviously purchasing at a different level than someone shopping in the grocery store at home. So, there are companies that supply wholesale level to food manufacturers where we can buy in bulk. And that is better for the supplier that they're able to sell more products and we're able to just purchase at a different level than if we were just purchasing personal, like, home size bags of sugar.
It's just a lot of research and digging and a lot of taste testing, which isn't always the worst thing. But yeah, continually searching for the best one that we can find.
Suman:
Well, let's actually, I'm gonna open up another point, so we'll use this one for another prompt.
So this is organic chocolate, right? And so I'd love to hear, like what makes your ice cream different? Right. I've got a lot of chocolate ice cream, right? So what is it, how do you compare yourself to other brands? You know, the Ben and Jerry's versus the Jennys, where do you fall? What is it?
I mean, it's pretty good, but I feel like I'm in the food now. Pretty good. Yeah. But it is pretty good.
Alec:
So I would say where, where we fall as far as an ice cream goes, is at that level of a Jenny's where you're that ultra premium ice cream. And I can get into what makes an ice cream tastes like ours.
You're adding to it, let's get into the nitty-gritty. But the one unique thing about us is there are a few, a handful of brands that are at that ultra premium level, but none of them are organic. So we're, we're the only one that also is organic certified and really guaranteeing that we're working with these sustainable suppliers.
So the biggest thing is that. Ice cream, the ultra premium, is the amount of air that you whip into your ice cream. And so when you're, when you're making ice cream, you're taking a liquid mixture that you can flavor and then simultaneously freezing it and whipping air into it. And so if you whip more air into the ice cream, you're going to get a fluffier and kind of cheaper, I guess product.
Whereas you're going to get that really nice, smooth, creamy texture that you're used to from these ultra premium ice cream brands. So that's a big thing of how we do it. And then also the amount of cream that you use in your recipe.
If you use more, obviously you're going to get a creamier recipe, and a creamier ice cream. So, those are the two big factors for us. And how we get there. And then on top of that, the way we flavor our ice cream is really, like I said earlier, really simply flavoring something to deliver a really unique and pure direct flavor.
So with our chocolate, for example, most companies will just use cocoa powder to flavor their chocolate ice cream, and that kind of leads to a kind of generic tasting chocolate ice cream. A lot of people don't really love store-bought chocolate ice cream, cause it just doesn't have a super strong chocolate flavor.
And so what we do is we take cocoa powder and we use cocoa powder, but then we also take fair trade chocolate and melt it down and turn it into liquid chocolate that we then add into mix in with our ice cream mix. And so we have both the cocoa powder and the liquid chocolate combining to create.
Suman:
Double, triple shot..
Alec:
It’s not just chocolate, it's about as much chocolate as you could throw into ice cream before. I don't know.
Suman:
Yeah, exactly. You may as well have both right. Put a piece of chocolate in the double chocolate. Now exactly right. That's awesome, man. So, it's interesting.
So these are more classic flavors, right? You got the mint chocolate chip. Okay. I've seen that one. Yeah. Chocolate honey, blue river LA honey, blueberry, lavender. That's kind of a different one. How do you think about it, well, I think I view, I mean, you even mentioned it, right? You're a bit of a creator.
You want it to do something, whether it is software. Interesting choice option set, you chose ice cream.
Right. And then, but now you're kind of a creator, right? You're like innovating on new flavors, kinda like how do you do that? What's your process?
Alec:
So we're definitely thinking about, okay. We have, and it's interesting too, because we're not an ice cream shop. So if you're at an ice cream shop, you can kind of throw a bunch of stuff at the wall, make a flavor for a day. See what people think of it. For us, we're just making ice cream to sell it to stores. So we're really thinking hard about, okay, we got that one pot, not one location on the shelf and we got to make each flavor that we're putting out really good.
And so the way we're kind of thinking about it now is really more along the lines of the honey blueberry, lavender and salted caramel. Yeah, where there is something very simple and almost classic about them, but they have these unique twists or, just this, a slight innovation where it's different than you've never had that flavor before, but it's something that feels familiar at the same time.
And you're just kind of just like, damn, that sounds amazing. I want to try it. Well, I got it.
Suman:
I have a question for you. So this is a live pitch. And so just for the viewers, you work with us on Marco experiences. So you do ice cream experiences, right? That's a taste testing. We've seen the factory, like how do you make ice cream?
So what I'm hearing is if you have a store you can go in. And so this is my pitch out. So if you have a store you can give ice cream to people, you can get their feedback, right? That's the benefit. Could we potentially do a mystery pint with like, hey, let's send people a random pint and get feedback, is that, and you can say, no, that's a terrible idea, but is that something?
Alec:
It's not the worst idea I've ever heard, but I don't know if we're going to do it.
Yeah, no, it is a fun thing with Marco being able to see people, especially during COVID where we haven't been able to do sampling in stores. And one of my favorite things about the Marco experiences is I can actually see people trying the ice cream and seeing people's faces and how they're reacting to the product and getting people's feedback on, oh, I like this flavor.
So far, they've all had, like all the critical audio, but no, that has been a lot of fun. Just interacting with people and sharing some ice cream. It's been great.
Suman:
The one last taste here, and then this is the mint chocolate chip, right? So, you had to share a little bit about what makes this one special?
Alec:
So mint chocolate chip is my childhood. So I put a lot of pressure on myself to, you know, we got to make this one into an incredible mint chip. And so the first thing you'll notice is that it's white, it's not green and that's because we never use any food coloring or food dye. We want it to be all as natural as possible.
And so. It's a white ice cream, we use peppermint oil to deliver a really nice crisp peppermint flavor. And then we have these mint chocolates. The flavor name is mint chocolate chip, but the chips we use are really more like chocolate chunks and they just kind of melt in your mouth when you bite into them and why we chose to use those ones super minty.
Suman:
By the way, it's quite minty.
Alec:
It was good. What the chocolate chips that we use rather sometimes when you bite into mint, chip ice cream, the chips kind of freeze over and they just get really hard when you bite into them. And I wanted to just have that really nice chocolate, mouth-coating experience with like you're biting into chocolate and it melts in your mouth.
And so we use those, it's just perfectly compliments that crisp mint ice cream. And so you have this really minty, refreshing flavor. Then the bittersweet chocolate and back and forth.
Suman:
We are going to do a little segment called just the topics. So we've got a quick fire round asking some fun questions. All right. So first, where's the weirdest place you've even eaten ice cream?
Alec:
Ooh. I’d say either in bed or on a forklift auto.
Suman:
Wow. Okay. We'll go to that one. Um, best factory. Okay. Fair enough. The best thing to put in ice cream, pie or...
Alec:
I would say ice cream on pie, but ice cream cake is the winner for me.
Suman:
That makes sense. What is the most regrettable ingredient that you've put into your ice cream?
Alec:
Most regrettable ingredient that I've ever put into my ice cream? I can't say I have one yet.
Suman:
All right. That just means you’re no regrets, man. Yeah, that's all part of the game. Let's see. What is the most ice cream you've eaten in a single day, a single day hour?
Alec:
I'd say probably like three pints.
Suman:
Holy crap. Three full pints. Oh my gosh.
Alec:
Yeah.
Suman:
Yeah, if you could have ice cream with anyone living or deceased, who would you share a pint with?
Alec:
Oh, that's a really good question. Um, specifically a pint of ice cream. I guess it would be kind of cool that ice cream with like, let's go ice cream, central Thomas Jefferson ice cream.
Suman:
Yeah. Did they even have ice cream back then?
Alec:
I'm sure they did, but yeah, they've had ice cream for like hundreds of years.
Suman:
Really crazy. Okay. I'll take your word for it. All right, the commercial will show the commercial that it is epic. Tell us a little bit about the background of this.
Alec:
Yeah. So the background was just sort of, we were making it during COVID and kind of thinking about how your social life is just non-existent at a certain point and I'm just playing on the idea of sometimes you just want to have a date with your ice cream and just have a perfect night in at home.
Suman:
Yeah. And so it’s a little raunchy, it's a little sexual, you know?
Alec:
Yeah. I also liked that because it just felt, I mean most, I know other ice cream companies wouldn’t do that.
Suman:
You know, it was tasteful, similar to your ice cream brand. With that, Alec, it's been our pleasure. You can book Alec’s experience on Marco experiences and you can have you and your company or you, you and your group of friends, do a private ice cream tour with Alec himself and then get some amazing ice cream shipped to your doorstep.
So. Cheers. Everyone, I hope you enjoyed it.
