New England native Dave Fenner grew up eating Carvel ice cream. For the past three and a half years, he has been executive chef of the Focus Brands subsidiary, developing new ice cream flavors for the frozen-treat chain, which has about 275 full units and 125 express units.
A graduate of Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I., Fenner was previously corporate chef for the now-defunct multiconcept franchisor Raving Brands.
Fenner recently discussed flavor trends with Nation’s Restaurant News, as well as the popularity of Carvel’s Nutella ice cream, which returned as a limited-time offer on March 14.
How do you spend most of your time?
First and foremost, everything I develop has got to work coming out of a soft-serve machine, because that’s what Carvel’s known for. If it works and holds up on a cone, and looks great and tastes great, from there I’ll take it to a hand-dipped [format].
Then we have Carvelanches, which are kind of like Dairy Queen Blizzards. Then we have Dashers, which are layered like a parfait. Then I’ll take the flavor to a novelty or a cake, and then I’ll have a full spectrum of that flavor for a season.
What kinds of ice cream flavors appeal to customers these days?
The kids are kind of cool because they’re gravitating toward cotton candy and fruity cereal flavors, and bubble gum of course. To come up with something like that, that would work out of a soft-serve machine, would be cool for that group, though we do [already] present a lot of those as hand-dipped ice creams already.
It sounds like kids want things that remind them of other things they eat.
And adults are kind of in that mode, too. I think a lot of it is nostalgia for them. During the summer we’ll run a black raspberry soft-serve ice cream that’s nostalgic for that generation, or butter pecan. To see that flavor as a soft serve — because that’s what Carvel is known for — just brings back memories of their childhood. A lot of [Carvel customers] have been going there for generation upon generation, and it just brings back great memories.
You have also introduced new flavors that have done well, like salted caramel. What other flavors have performed well?
We killed it with the Nutella last year. Nutella itself was kind of taken aback by how well it did. The pumpkin did really well, too. It was always an optional program for the fall, and last year we made it a standard LTO for everybody systemwide, and it had really good feedback, and the cake we designed was something they could take for Thanksgiving as well — it was like a pumpkin pie.
How seasonal do you think items like pumpkin ice cream are? Is that something you could sell in February or June?
Nah, I think it’s just that fall season — September, October, done by Thanksgiving. The day after Thanksgiving, no one’s going to touch it.
Nutella’s success is interesting, because if we were European it would be nostalgic, but Americans don’t grow up on Nutella.
I think it was more present for the generations behind me, and for kids my daughter’s age and younger it definitely is a permanent menu item in their eyes. One thing that helped us last year when we introduced it was that we were able to pull in the kind of crowd that isn’t quite as often at a Carvel. They’re more often at yogurt shops. I think we were able to cut into that, and those customers were able to see what our product was all about, which is great.
More chocolate in 2016
What are you working on now?
A lot of the flavors we’ve been working on in the past have been from a vanilla base, and I’m trying to deviate from that slightly. Chocolate is a pretty huge flavor. I’ll probably be working on that for 2016.
So we could see something like chocolate and caramel or Rocky Road?
Yeah, or s’mores or something like that.
What’s your process for developing a new ice cream flavor?
I read a lot, see what the flavor trends are. I have a great marketing team and we get together and brainstorm. We also use big brands that want to co-brand with us [like Nutella and Oreo]. From there, if something stands out, I’ll make it and see if I can develop a recipe for it. If I think it’s great, then I’ll get my marketing together and we’ll try it, and if they think it’s great then I’ll bring samples over [to Focus Brands headquarters], or to the Focus Forum, which is all the brands meeting together.
Then from there we’ll present it to our franchise committee, who have been elected to represent the franchisees. I’ll present it to them, and we’ll do a system test in those areas, and then we usually get a good idea of what the customer likes. If it does well, then we’ll set it up for the following year.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected].
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