The brand new Cedar Park shop is promised to open soon — co–founder Jeff Ziga talks flavors, Philly, and experimentation.
Street: At what point did you decide to open a second store? Why this location? Jeff Ziga: We wanted to do another thing because it was going well at our World Headquarters in Fishtown/East Kensington. [Cedar Park] is similar to where our other store is: people around here own houses and that’s the demographic where we opened before and found a lot of support from people who lived a block away and loved it. We wanted to be near people who were going to support us long term.
Street: And you’re next to Dock Street Brewery so, pizza? JZ: That’s a third reason: We like the neighborhood, it’s close to a park, we happened to find a building we liked and it’s close to pizza. We’re next to Pizza Brain in [our] East Kensington [location] so being next to pizza is a good thing.
Street: You had a cart in the Quad during Fling. How did your partnership with Penn start? JZ: We’ve been doing events since we started in 2011 with tricycles. Events and festivals were one of the first things we did and I think we were at Penn in 2011.
Street: You work with Bon Appetit Dining too… JZ: Yeah, they reached out to us. I think they wanted to feature nice local artisan–type people producing food. It’s good. The hope is that by next fall we can do single serving cups for a more grab–and–go product.
Street: How’d you choose the name? JZ: It just kind of sounded right. You look at an ice cream cone and you go “Awww.” It has the right vibe. I didn’t think about this then but I explain it now: you look at ice cream and you feel like a kid. It’s like reverting to an infantile state of pure id.
Street: What flavors have been your biggest hits? JZ: There are some that I call no–brainers like Bourbon Bourbon Vanilla. It’s the thing we’re doing to be there instead of just vanilla. It’s not alcoholic but people always ask if kids can have it. We have to explain a lot of things, like “What’s pizza flavor?” Yeah, it tastes like pizza.
Street: Are you making any new flavors right now? JZ: The idea is constantly to evolve. It really always has been: we source a lot of produce as locally and seasonally as possible. We have emerging relationships with local and urban farms. Sometimes they come to us with something interesting that we have not made an ice cream flavor with before and we will do that. Our first event was May of 2011 and we’ve made 40 ice creams at this point. Some of them have been “let’s not do that again.”
Street: If you were ordering off your menu, what would you get? JZ: I would probably get a scoop of ice cream on a cone.
Street:Uh–huh…well which flavor? JZ: [hesitates]
Street: Are you sick of it? JZ: By no means, but I haven’t had a scoop of ice cream since the fall of last year. I just taste things, like the rest of a milkshake. Last Friday, though, we made a flavor with Arctic Splash, a subpremium type of iced tea popular in random places, like Fishtown. I had to scoop one to post a picture online and no one wanted it. So, I had a scoop of ice cream on a cone outside and the weather was nice and I was like, “this is nice. I see why our customers like it.”
Street: With flavors like Earl Gray Sriracha, how do you differentiate between what’s weird and is going to work out well and what’s just weird? JZ: It’s a combination of methods of discovery. We’re getting better at knowing what’s going to work. It starts out with trial and error then it becomes more trial less error. If it sucks then you don’t give it to people.
Street: Is there a flavor you really pushed to have on the menu? JZ: I was really particular about the coffee ice cream (Coffee Toffee). I really believe we make the best coffee ice cream that exists. It’s so fucking good. We use Blue Bottle coffee beans. Another one is Speculoos flavor, which everyone knows because now Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods make cookie butter. Speculoos is a Belgian cookie for the St. Nicholas festival and you can get them everywhere in Europe. A year and half ago it wasn’t a flavor people in America were into. I brought a bunch home from Europe in my suitcase and right after we made it and Trader Joe's and Whole Foods started marketing their cookie butter. Before they started selling it here, I had to smuggle Speculoos back to the U.S. That might be a federal crime. Guilty.
Street: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve tried to make ice cream out of? JZ: We made a spicy mustard ice cream that some people loved and some people hated. We made a honey miso chai ice cream that most people hated. My friend Liam, who likes everything we’ve ever made, wrote, “I think that with honey miso chai flavor, Lil Baby’s has finally flown too close to the sun.” I told him, “If not us, then who?”
Store Hours: M – Th: 3-10
F: 3–11
Sat : 12–11
Sun: 12–10
