When we last chatted with Martin in September 2020, he had been in business with his wife Emma for almost one year. The Devils’ Own Ice Creamery was already starting to gain strong traction across Tasmania. Since then, Martin and Emma’s business has grown swiftly, and they have set even bigger goals for their ice cream and sorbet business.
From hiring employees, opening a café, buying a food truck, and winning local fine food awards, the Devils’ Own Ice Creamery is taking over Tasmania. Martin and Emma’s next goal is to have a small factory location so that they can get a license to wholesale their ice-cream and get it on grocery store shelves. From there, they will try to export their productsto mainland Australia.
Read about their first year as business owners here.
Read Martins 2022 Update
Read Martins 2022 UpdateSince we last chatted in September 2020, we have purchased and set up a food van. We can now tour Tasmania and get our ice-creams to a range of new clients and customers.
In September 2021, we opened our first ice-cream café near Launceston City Park, and we have all sorts of dessert products such as ice-creams, sorbets, waffles, desserts and milkshakes. All of these menu items maintain our focus on being gluten-free and allergy friendly. We are getting a lot of regular customers who can rely on our café to cater for their dietary needs. When we first opened the café, we had the opportunity to do a few radio segments and newspaper articles.
Most recently, in June 2022, we entered the Royal Tasmania Fine Food Awards in the ice-cream division. We submitted 11 products in total, 5 sorbets and 6 ice-creams. Out of the 11 products we received11 awards. We are looking to do more competitions next year, and there are other flavours that we would like to showcase. Our Spiced Pear Sorbet which won gold, is now on the menu in a local Launceston restaurant.
We always had the goal to be a small family business, and now that we have the café, we have been able to hire three staff members and become an extended family business. The growth that we have been seeing, even during COVID-19 times, is nothing short of amazing for us.
New Goals
Next, we are getting a professional graphic designer to help us with labels because we are trying to get 10 of our sorbet flavours into IGAs and Hill Street Grocers in Tasmania. Alan, our Many Rivers business coach, helped us secure a Many Rivers microloan to get the artwork done by a designer and the labels printed. After that, we have a goal to export to the mainland within the next 12 months. We are really excited to have this opportunity, with Many Rivers’ support.
After that, we would like to upgrade our cafe kitchen or go to the next step and get a commercial production space. This would be a little factory so that we can get our Tasmanian Diary Approval and wholesale the ice-cream. The commercial production space would support getting our ice-cream and sorbets on the IGA and Hill Street Grocer shelves.
The Devils’ Own Ice Creamery at the Royal Tasmania Fine Food Awards
Vanilla Bean Division
- Vanilla Bean Ice-cream – bronze
Premium Division
- Chocolate – gold
- Caramel – silver
Specialty Flavour Division
- French indulgence – bronze
- Jersey Caramel – silver
- Raspberry white chocolate – silver
Sorbet Division
- Vegan vanilla bean ice-cream made with a cashew-based ice-cream – silver
- Apple raspberry sorbet – gold
- Spiced pear sorbet – gold
- Tropical Sorbet – silver
- Honey Macadamia Brittle – silver
B0007217
Read more . . .
