The high cost of good ice cream
Written on August 4th, 2010, by adminToday's NYTimes Dining section has a cover story about the high price of artisanal ice cream.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/dining/04icecream.html?
Its a long article. My favorite paragraph could also be written about coffee or pizza or cupcakes. " The world of high-end ice cream is small, and marbled with squabbles and secrets, making it difficult to pin down what is in the stuff. Those who add milk powder scoff at those who use guar gum ( a common stabilzer thst is considered "natural" by the F.D.A.). Those who stick to a basic flavor palette dismiss the makers of Whiskey Brickle and Rosemary-Goat's Milk." Americans argue about ice cream because they have a lot of confidence about the subject. Take them to Tour d'Argent and they might hesitate to offer an opinion. You don't need a degree from the Culinary Institute of America or two years' peeling potatoes in a Bavarian basement to have ready opinions about ice cream. Everyone in the country enjoyed grade school ice cream sandwiches, Carvel cones dipped in "brown bonnet" or a "concrete" from Ted Drewes on South Grand in St. Louis.
I think ice cream is expensive because good ice cream manages the worst of both worlds. If you run a steak house then you buy expensive beef, known to restaurant accountants like the famous Saul Garlick as Costs of Goods Sold or COGS. Your throw the beef on a grill and flip it onto a plate. The cooks haven't spent any time in those Bavaraian basements being abused and everyone involves thinks that the CiA is an inept spy agency. If you run a bakery you buy ingredients that are for the most part cheap like flour and sugar but you have high Labor costs because someone did suffer for two years learning how to make perfect brioche, and sometimes they had to learn French in order to learn all those Gallic bread secrets. And then those trained people spend hours hulling strawberries (which must be washed BEFORE you remove their crowns), macerating the berries in just the right amount of sugar for just the right amount of time, pureeing them, and sieving them to remove pesky seeds. And only then can anyone combine them with eggs, cream and citrus to make a pretty good fruit ice cream. Artisanal ice cream is increasingly common. It really is an affordable luxury. Every college town has its Bent Spoon (in Princeton) or Amy's ice cream (in Austin). A business type told me that Ben and Jerry's believes that the pain point for their customers is about $5 to $6. They say that knowing that those customers can buy a pint of B&J in any grocery or convenience store for about the same amount of money. Its usually absurd to compare grocery prices with those at most good ice cream stores.
My complaint is not with the better ice cream stores trying to survive in a very difficult environment. It is with the bad ice cream stores, usually chain stores, that sell uninteresting ice cream for $6 to $7 a scoop.
