We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Stacy Harfert a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Stacy, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

Roonies does things a bit differently than most industries, not just the the ice cream industry. Our company strives to not only give back to the community, but also bring the community together. Being an ice cream company, we hope to bring joy and happiness to the consumer; we all love having a delicious treat! Although we don’t have a brick and motor location, we present in the community by coordinating volunteer events. We created Roonies Recognizes as a platform. To date, Roonies Recognizes has brought over 250 volunteers together though all walks of life. We’ve organized beans and rice packaging events that are funded by the community and donated directly back into the community. Over 15,000 meals have been packaged!

Stacy, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

The founder, Stacy Harfert, started making ice cream during the COVID-19 pandemic with her two sons to sell at small local events. As she learned more about other ice cream bars available in stores, she realized that they were all boring – both in flavor and appearance. With a background in product development and design, she looked at ice cream through a new lens. Leveraging a creative spirit, she added colorful chocolate drizzle to her delicious, all-natural vanilla ice cream recipe, and created several new ice cream flavors. As neighbors and friends tried the bars, it became apparent that there aren’t commercially available products that taste as great and look as festive as the Roonies ice cream bars.

Less than a year later, Roonies Ice Cream was formed, and a commercial kitchen space was constructed with the capacity to produce millions of ice cream bars per year.

Now, Roonies also offers ice cream sandwiches and cups focusing wholesale novelty ice creams to convenience stores, event stadiums and recreational outlets in Utah.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

Roonies ice cream manufactures ice cream novelties in Utah. I started making ice cream when my kids were sent home from school during the pandemic as an activity for us to do. Through trail and error, I created a simple, delicious recipe – but the process just began! Working in my own kitchen and using my home refrigerator / freezer, I constructed the ice cream bar design. Seems silly that you would design food, but that is what I did! Knowing that you eat with your eyes first, I wanted something eye-catching, colorful, and delicious. After coming up with the design, I had to develop a way to mass-produce the ice cream bars. Most of my learning came from the batch freezer (commercial ice cream machine) manufacture, Fortfrio. They spent a lot of one-on-one time with my working out the process.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I recently read “Beyond the Label” by Maureen Chiquet, the former Global CEO of Chanel, she shares her rise to the top story and stepping stones to get there. I really appreciated her honest story and lessons along the way because there was so much I could not only relate to but learn from.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.rooniesicecream.com
• Instagram: @rooniesicecream
• Facebook: @rooniesicecream
• Linkedin: roonies ice cream
• Twitter: @rooniesicecream

Image Credits
Chelsea Sybrowsky McPherson Jessica Meyer