Pizza Capers launches ice cream brand
Pizza Capers has introduced a new brand.
As the brand continues to grow, Pizza Capers has now started to venture into sweet treats with the launch of their new ice cream brand, “The Little Ice Cream Shoppe.”
The brand has spent six months developing their product range that would cater to their broad customer base. Craig Wheate, Head Chef of Pizza Capers, shares, “Like our generous and high quality pizza toppings, The Little Ice Cream Shoppe range includes high quality ingredients and generous additions.”
The range of flavours include Salted Caramel & Malt, Red Velvet Chocolate Cupcake, low fat Mango Gelato, and Cookies and Cream. Mr. Wheate further adds, “Pizza Capers has never been afraid to experiment with bold flavours for our pizza, making our stores a natural home for The Little Ice Cream Shoppe.”
The brand even has a flavour called “The Flavour So Crazy It Doesn’t Even Have a Name,” which is described as a ‘lolly shop in a tub.’
The new ice cream range is available through the in store freezers of 122 Pizza Capers stores across Australia.
Q&A with Pizza Capers on their new ice cream brand.
QSR Media: What has pushed the company to venture into producing its own ice cream range?
Pizza Capers: There were many reasons but two stick out: (1) to enhance our consumer experience by offering an amazing product they can only get from Pizza Capers (2) our love of product innovation.
Our brand had the choice of partnering with a very well known ice cream brand but upon deep reflection, we all thought “hey, we love to innovate so why can’t we make something like they do”. When we all agreed we would do it, we then asked ourselves “hang on, why make it the same as they do…let’s make it even better”. With higher levels of control we can somewhat mitigate our productions costs but, nevertheless, this ice cream range is very expensive to make. This will seem very backward to many food providers but the development of TLICS range is very much like the way we make our gourmet pizzas…we craft the product and flavours first – focus on developing the absolute best tasting product we can.
QSR Media: What were the challenges faced in the development of the product?
Pizza Capers: Ultimately getting the product to the highest quality standards that we aimed to achieve. In developing and modifying the product, every action basically had an equal reaction. For example, when we wanted more delicious, chunky elements in the ingredients, we had to work hard on the manufacturing process to prevent these “heavy” ingredients from sinking straight to the bottom of the ice cream tubs. If we wanted a unique ingredient added could we source it easily or could it be put into our ice cream and retain its individual integrity? Basically, the end result took us a very long time to get to.
QSR Media: Will more flavours be introduced, aside from the six that were launched?
Pizza Capers: These are top secret but we have a number hidden away that we can release. There were a lot of tears in culling these flavours to eventually settle on a final 6.
QSR Media: So far, which of the six flavours has been the most popular amongst your customers?
Pizza Capers: The research groups demonstrated that the range we have settled on is beautifully balanced from nice and simple flavours in the gelato range through to daring and exciting flavour combination of the “The Flavour So Crazy It Doesn’t Even Have A Name” and “Red Velvet Chocolate Cupcake”. The Salted Caramel & Malt Crunch has received overwhelming rave reviews.
QSR Media: What could we expect from “The Little Ice Cream Shoppe” this year?
Pizza Capers: For TLICS, we are simply driving awareness and trial. We are supremely confident in the quality and flavours of our product range thus far and once we are clear on our ongoing volume requirements and demand, we will be in be better position to evolve our offering in terms flavour range and, further down the track, new distribution channels.
