We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ashley Vedder. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ashley below.

Ashley , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

There is a story behind my mission, and it has to do with my husband who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease at the age of 38. This was a big shock to him and our family. He grew up as an athlete and enjoying life to the fullest. He was the former Cal Berkeley Quarterback and went on to play football in the Canadian League. He ended his athletic career early but stayed very active. He was a busy dad of almost 3 kids and in the middle of building his career.

Things started to become suspect when some unusual changes came to his physiology.  He started having a gait walk, pain in his shoulder (where he had surgery years before) and neck pain. We were convinced this was an orthopedic issue. Six months later after seeing orthopedic doctors, we had a visit with a neurologist and two months after that, we received the jarring diagnosis. Justin had early onset Parkinson’s Disease.

Fast forward two years, he started working with a nutritionist, to focus on healthy eating and to see if it will help him. We learned during this time; a healthy gut is connected to a healthy brain. His new eating lifestyle was definitely a big change for him especially with a job that required travel and frequent dining on the road. I realized we needed to change the way we ate at home as well. I had to jump on board because I make all the food for our family.

I decided to join a group of women doing a Whole 30 Plan, which is 3 1/2 months eating super clean. No cane sugar, honey, agave, maple syrup, dairy, breads, pasta,  condiments containing words we do not understand and absolutely nothing GMO. The only sweetener allowed was whole dates.

His new lifestyle plan with the nutritionist consisted of the same idea but everything had to be organic. He could have goat cheeses, goat and camel’s milk, Greek plain yogurt, honey, maple syrup, gluten free sour dough bread and rye bread. So, for four straight months, I made everything we ate. But at two months we cheated, and took our kids out for frozen yogurt after a youth sports event. We decided to treat ourselves because we have been working so hard.

Walking out of the frozen yogurt we all felt awful. Our bodies were shocked by introducing all of the ingredients we had worked to cleanse ourselves of. This was an epiphany for me. I literally had a dream that I should start a healthy ice cream shop, and not long after, Vedder’s healthy ice cream shop was born. Our ice cream is made with unrefined sugars, gluten free, non-dairy base, no additives included, non-GMO, and only healthy fresh ingredients allowed. The reaction from consumers has been outstanding.

My mission is to teach every person, they can enjoy a healthy dessert and it doesn’t have to be bad for you. It does taste delicious, and it hits the spot. This ended up helping a lot of people with allergies, fighting different diseases or those who like to fill their bodies with the best ingredients.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My business is an all-natural Ice Cream company. We found the ice cream business was lacking a healthier ice cream product with real whole foods in it, so we created an organic, dairy-free, gluten-free, non-GMO product sweetened with unrefined sugars (dates and maple syrup). We have a standard suite of flavors and are continuously developing and testing new flavor combinations. We also produce and sell ice sandwiches with interchangeable and customizable cookie/ice cream flavor combinations.

I’m proud we have a retail location, we are in grocery stores, and we were able to be the VIP Dessert Area at the Ohana Festival this past September in Dana Point (Eddie Vedder – no relation – organizes this music festival.

In our retail channel we produce and sell cookies, cookie dough balls, healthy doggy products. In our wholesale channel in the past year, we were stocked in 16 stores including all Erewhon locations. Our event channel has been successful in a variety of venues and event types, from birthday parties to music festivals (e.g. Ohana).

I would like potential customers and followers to know we support the Michael J. Fox Foundation (as seen on our packaging) and donate a portion of our proceeds to Parkinson’s Research.

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

After I decided to follow through with my idea of making healthy ice cream in 2017, I bought a small kitchen ice cream maker on Amazon. About two months after, I ended up with six ice cream makers in my kitchen. I was constantly coming up with different flavors and trying to perfect my recipes. In October of 2020, I purchased a large Bravo Gelato Machine and leased a retail space. I learned how to scale up my recipes and run these test batches through this large machine. I then started selling these pints at farmers markets to see if the public would like this new ice cream idea. It also, helped me to decide which flavors people like and did not enjoy.

I ended up opening my shop on July 17, 2021 for the public. Then I was accepted into Erewhon in November 2021. Everything is manufactured, packed and stored in freezers at the shop. We rent freezer trucks to transport the pints to our distribution center in Los Angeles. Then the stores call our distributor to order ice cream and they drive it to the different stores.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Word of mouth, Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, Yelp, The Ecology Center, different locations it is in. I believe everything helps. The more people hear about it, see it, talk about it, tastings at different venues, will help to build a reputation of a healthier tasty product on market.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.vedderssweets.com
• Instagram: @vedderssweets
• Facebook: Vedder’s
• Linkedin: Ashley Vedder
• Yelp: Vedder’s

Image Credits
Stena Chang