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

Candice, appreciate you joining us today. Has Covid resulted in any major changes to your business model?

We purchased this business in November 2018 from a previous owner and spent the whole first year learning everything about ice cream and this business. With a better understanding of the business model, we knew we wanted to pivot from wholesale to food service. Officially launching our operations in 2019, we began shifting our focus away from wholesale and expanding our food service clientele. Then COVID hit. With restaurants closed, all our food service efforts came to a halt, and we were forced to pivot back to wholesale. We expended all our resources to meet grocery store demands during the pandemic, hoarding ingredients and producing thousands of tubs with 3 people and a single batch freezer. Because people were still going to the grocery store to buy ice cream while stuck at home, the revenue generated by our wholesale outlets kept us afloat.

As restaurant operations began to open back up, we continued our food service expansion and soon found our way into custom services after working with a chef and business owner to create a series of custom ice cream flavors with their desserts. We started participating in farmers markets and other events to increase brand awareness and also dip our toes into the retail market. As people began to gather again for celebrations, we saw a demand for catering services and took that on as well.

Candice, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I completed my degree in mechanical engineering in 2021 and found myself finishing my last college exam in my childhood bedroom. The plan had always been to secure a job before graduation and start working a few months after, but COVID threw plans out the window. During the last half of my senior year, I turned down a full-time position that would start within a month of my graduation, my grandma passed away, and after quarantining and social distancing for the past year, I knew the last thing I wanted to do was be working in an office doing a job I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do. So I decided to take a year off to just rest and connect with people and reevaluate what exactly I wanted to do with my life. After several months of a seemingly endless “summer break”, I soon found myself helping out at my family’s ice cream business and the rest is history.

While we all wear many hats when working for a small business, I am primarily responsible for our catering services and any events, markets, pop-ups, etc. that we partake in. I have always been passionate about creating experiences for people, and I think that’s why I love catering. Being a small part of celebrating people’s most special moments has become one of my favorite things. I take care of a lot of our B2C services as well as manage a few of our food service clients. I am involved in all graphic design and social media and marketing efforts as well. I am also just very passionate about ice cream :)

Inspired by “dirty ice cream” and sorbeteros in the Philippines, we specialize in authentic Filipino and Southeast Asian flavors. We are a women and family-owned, small-batch ice cream manufacturer in San Dimas, CA offering wholesale, food service, catering, and custom services for Southern California restaurants and chefs. We strive to be an ice cream solution for ice cream shops, restaurants, businesses looking to develop their own ice cream flavors, and more. We make ube ice cream the way it should be just as we remember it from back home. Our hope is that whether it brings you home or it’s just become a new home staple, you create new memories with our ice cream.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

When we bought this business, we knew little to nothing about making ice cream. During the ownership transition, the previous owner trained us in making ice cream. Sandra Saragih, who is in charge of our research and development and production, has a background in information technology. Lot Mallari, who is responsible for our sales and business relations, has a background in audio visual engineering. But when the pandemic hit and we received purchase order after purchase order, they were the ones fulfilling orders with just a single batch freezer. Fulfilling wholesale purchase orders as a small batch producer is certainly a lot of work and not too common, but we also learned to use our small batch capabilities to our own advantage. Small batch production gives us a lot of flexibility when it comes to developing flavors whether it be for our own brand or other businesses. Because we can produce ice cream in small batches, we have the ability to produce flavors for a limited time like with custom ice cream. In our partnership with Cal Poly Pomona to produce their own CPP-branded ice cream, we can take small quantities of farm fresh produce that are at peak ripeness and turn it into ice cream to be sold on campus shelves in no time instead of having that produce go to waste. While we utilize a lot of manual processes in our manufacturing in areas where others typically use more automation, we have learned to lean into the fact that we offer premium ice cream because we are small batch as well as play to our strengths by diversifying our product and service offerings.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Since this business was already existing when we came into the picture, building our reputation meant maintaining relationships with existing clients and expanding our clientele. Before we took over, we knew that this ube ice cream was unlike anything we had tasted here in the US, and this would ultimately help build our reputation within our market as we expanded into food service. I think our customer service also played a big part in our reputation early on. Returning to business operations after a global pandemic was no easy feat for restaurants and other food service businesses. Being a small business and understanding these needs, I think that we had the ability to cater to our clients with more care and attention to detail than the larger suppliers and distributors that our clients had previously worked with.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.coneyislandcreamery.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coneyislandcreamery
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coneyislandcreamery
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/coney-island-creamery-san-dimas-2

Image Credits
Picture 1 (2 girls behind table with push cart on left side): Jasmyn B Photography