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hey welcome back to the freeze dry
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business Channel my name is David and I
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am the host of the freeze dry business
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Channel we're here today to focus on
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entrepreneurs in the freeze drying space
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and you're lucky because we're going to
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be on site at one of the fastest growing
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Freez dried ice cream businesses in the
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entire country they're booming on Tik
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Tok social media all over the place
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because they took their ice cream and
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made it into a Freez dried product
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they've got a lot of different flavors
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they're going to share a lot of
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different pieces mistakes successes
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advice all along the way that you can
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gather and be inspired to start your own
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freeze dried business all right so
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before this was all a freeze drying
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effort you sold ice cream but tell us
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about how the family actually started
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freeze drying ice cream did you start
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off with actual ice cream or did you
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actually have all the product and the
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cows what is this family farm all about
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well actually how we started freeze
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dried was there was a uh local company
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that approached us and they brought it
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up to us and we didn't really know that
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freeze dried was a thing until then and
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they kind of focused on the candy and we
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decided that maybe we should focus on
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the ice cream and so we kind of ran with
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that idea and we just implemented what
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we were already good at and before you
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know what started doing R&D and we had a
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lot of failures ice cream blew up in the
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machines a lot Vettes do not work the
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greatest we figured that out too certain
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Vettes and what's a verette what does
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that mean a verette would be like a
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raspberry swirl through it we would have
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chocolate chocolate's always a bugger to
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cuz that swirl through too it doesn't
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freeze dry so we've noticed that gets
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rancid after about 6 months so we just
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kept doing R&D and before you know it we
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kind of we we had three that worked
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really well so we just started pushing
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those three ice cream so there's a lot
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of R&D that went into this but you
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already had the product um and so it was
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kind of a you saw just an opportunity to
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test something when did you actually
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know that this was going to be a whole
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secondary line of your family Farm's
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product well we kind of noticed that the
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trend it's it's become more people are
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talking about freeze dried and so then
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what we decided to do was kind of start
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introducing it to some of our partners
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and they took it and as in some of the
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DSD guys we work with and they started
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saying it's just sellent so then we just
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kind of naturally started going and then
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we took it on the uh online platforms
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started kind of introducing some of that
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and it's just been moving what we
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noticed with ice cream instead of like
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candy candy seems like it just like blew
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up and it's kind of ice cream just seems
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like it's more it's going to be more
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consistent we feel like it's more
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longevity so we're hoping that's not
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just a phase but I feel like it's just
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going to hopefully be long term and
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these two freeze dryers here that you
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have here what are these two machines
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for cuz I know you have other ones as
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well these two really focus on the
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canyon Skittles so we do a line of
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Skittles but this is kind of what these
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two do and if we have any R&D we'll kind
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of be got a couple machines for R&D cuz
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that takes time especially with ice
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cream yeah and then Skittles Jolly puffs
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or Jolly which are Jolly Ranchers we do
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those too Cookie dolls yeah tell us
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about the overall complexity in trying
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to create an actual freeze-dried product
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so if you have you make your own all on
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do you make all of your ingredients on
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this family farm or do you Source it
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from different places tell us about how
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you actually make the ice cream to then
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freeze dry we do both so we do make
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stuff on our own here with our on-site
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Bakery and then we also Source locally
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or even we go further out to but just
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good sources of products that we have
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you got to use good ingredients when
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you're running through the freeze drers
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if you're going to spend that much time
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freeze dring a product you want to make
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sure that the end result is good so
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that's what we really focus on is really
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good quality ingredients any baked good
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Concepts can be a little tricky
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sometimes it's just kind of like the the
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ice cream part of it it you don't know
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what it's going to end up like until you
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run it through the machine and it
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sometimes just does long and how long
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would you say it took to like actually
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refine your product let's timeline wise
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how long did it take for you to to
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actually know your recipe and say we're
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running this every time and now now that
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you're like you know really doing well
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in your sales but but just like how did
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you what was the timeline longer than
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you think I still think we're still
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doing that I don't think it ever end no
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because like we put our ice cream in a
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blast freeze it's at - 255 and if that
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thing is at5 that affects the freeze
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dryers and we will have this things
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bubble up so we're still dealing with
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that we just got to everything has to be
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precise we got to make sure these things
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are cooled all the way down to -20 and
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stuff like that so I feel like we have a
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lot we still have some Human air in our
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situation but we're always still
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learning but I it took it takes forever
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it does be honest it's a couple years
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just to dial in some of the certain
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kinds of flavors on the other side of it
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on our Frozen side it took us how many
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years just to figure out our base
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concept and our ice cream about three
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years to figure that out vanilla was the
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hardest one to figure out for us cuz
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that's your base for everything else
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vanilla ice cream was the hardest for
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our family to figure out and we all did
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it together and we we got it figured out
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but it took us about two years before we
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started the creamery what are your
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thoughts on now cuz I sell a lot of
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fruit in my freeze drying business of my
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own but a lot of people are are doing
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freeze-dried fruit have you thought
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about implementing freeze-dried fruit in
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the ice cream have you experiment with
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powderize freeze-dried fruit and then
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mixing into naturally flavor anything
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like that so we are dabbling with some
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purees and we'll do some fruits but you
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know we had a hard enough time just
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getting strawberry ice cream to go and
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we still haven't figured out peach ice
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cream or any of that yet cuz it's just
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it's and our strawberry ice cream is
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just ice cream strawberries ground
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that's all it is so kind of to your
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point is fruit is like and we notice
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that's the the easiest one here to work
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on a machine is our strawberry ice cream
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that we don't ever have issues with it
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but um we're excited to start new and
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new flavors of ice cream I think we're
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just going to focus really heavily on
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ice cream and ice cream flavors because
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that's what we're good at that's what we
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enjoy and so tell I'm going to move over
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here a little bit but like tell us a
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little about these machines you know
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there's a lot of different brands of
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freeze dryers out here um I personally
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started with a Harvest Right like this I
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don't have an Excel but uh Harvest Right
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has been a real big Staple in freeze
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drying for almost over a decade as of
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this video but uh how do you choose to
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come to decide this type type of machine
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this brand uh first of all um it's
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everywhere out there like you said it's
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yeah and then they slowly got bigger so
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this is just a six tray but we
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everything else we have are seven trays
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and they work really well with the ice
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cream that for us but um we did go to a
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big large commercial units that did not
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work for us in our ice cream so that
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work on Candy worked on Candy does not
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ice cream so we struggled for a year
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trying to figure those out so we just
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went back to harvest right we until you
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grow Next Level yeah get a big
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commercial I think they're a good
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stepping St honestly yeah this works for
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us so that's a good point I've
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interviewed a lot of different freeze
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dry manufacturers and what and I've also
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interviewed several experts in the
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industry that have dealt with vacuums
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that all that type of thing and what
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we're all finding in this growing freeze
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drying space is every recipe is unique
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but once you find a freeze dryer that
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meets that need to get that recipe uh
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coming out with that finished product
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it's like it's go time and you just run
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with it so you figure it out go time
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yeah takes a while to get there but you
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keep at it you'll figure it out yeah
