Stirred by hand

It isn't only the emptying that is done by hand. The recipes are stirred and tasted at the dairy, the fruit is cut and folded in, sauces and brittle are made from scratch, and every tub is filled, sealed and labelled manually. The machines churn the ice cream — the rest is people.

Caramel, chocolate and fruit sauce should run in distinct ribbons through the ice cream, so you meet them in spoonfuls and not as an average. That requires them to be added after the ice cream has frozen — gently, in layers, by hand. A pump can't tell the difference between spreading and destroying.

Cookie dough, brownie, nut brittle. Large pieces get crushed if they are forced through a pipe. We fold them in as the ice cream is emptied, so they stay whole all the way to the tub — and are still pieces when your customer eats them three weeks later.

Manual emptying is the slowest part of our production. It is also what most clearly sets a finished product apart from a gourmet one. We have never found a shortcut you couldn't taste.