Foothills Creamery partnering with local businesses to create unique ice cream flavours

An Alberta ice cream company is partnering with local businesses to create unique ice cream flavours for the summer.

It’s the busy season for Foothills Creamery that’s producing thousands of litres of ice cream during the summer months and is partnering with local, small businesses to create new flavours for the month of July and it boasts more than 80 flavours.

“Pistachio with almond is my favorite, it’s delicious,” said Josh Renning, director of operations. “It’s a lot to manage because you think about all the different ingredients that we need to carry for those 80 different SKUs and then trying to keep all those in stock because of course some obscure SKU is always going to be somebody’s favorite so if you say you’re discontinuing it, they’re devastated, right.”

Renning says when the operation is in full swing, it needs deliveries of 56,000 litres of cream weekly.

“All of our cream is Western Canadian Dairy,” he said. “We love that we’re supporting farmers here in Alberta and that’s part of our story, we’re transforming their product into something that we’re proud to pass on to our consumers.”

New for the month of July, Foothills Creamery has partnered with Confluence Distilling and Canadian Heritage Roasting Company to create a limited-edition Shaft Ice Cream that is a caffeinated blend of cold brew with a touch of vodka.

“We’re taking a popular drink with coffee and some alcohol and turning it into an ice cream,” said Scott Wegener, VP brand operations. “We have some great food scientists here that work on a small batch of ice cream and make it in a little countertop freezer and mix stuff together and then we taste and try it.”

Phee Mah, owner and GM of Confluence Distillery is excited to take part in the ice cream flavour development process.

“The world of ice cream was way out of my realm of imagination for work, but it’s really exciting,” she said. “It just plays so well into the cocktail culture and ice cream and the Shaft just makes so much sense together.”

Mike Wenzlawe, co-founder of Canadian Heritage Roasting Company says it’s surreal to see his coffee used to flavour ice cream and is excited to see how it’s made in person at the factory.

“It’s just kind of a peek behind the curtain and seeing how things are produced is just always really intrinsically valuable and interesting,” he said. “It’s cool to be able to make this full circle for us and see our products make into the final product itself.”

If the new product does well for its one month trial, then Wegener says it could make its way into a more permanent run and be added to the 80 plus flavours in the company’s top secret recipe catalogue.

“Last year we did a Stampede Whiskey ice cream and partnered with Eau Claire Distillery,” said Wegener. “Now we’re doing a whiskey caramel ice cream and we also had a salted caramel and cookies and cream last year and a chocolate covered strawberry - that were all limited time runs and now they’re permanent flavors.”

Wegener says the ideas for new flavours come from all 90 of the company’s staff - from the line workers to the marketing team.

“We have a group of people that work on new product development - an innovation manager, marketing team, sales, production and supply chain but everybody gets involved in some ideas of what we can make, that’s the fun of working in a small company,” he said. “Everybody’s free to come up with ideas and put them up on a board and say what do we want to make next?”

To celebrate National Ice Cream Day on July 19th, Foothills Creamery is hosting its fifth annual ‘Scoop Slam’ ice cream eating contest.

“A small group of people came up with it and it’s turned into something bigger,” he said. “Our record for the most ice cream eaten in five minutes is over four litres so we’ll see if somebody can beat that this year.”

Learn more about the event here: https://www.instagram.com/foothillscreamery/