A good ice cream is never too sweet, doesn't hurt your teeth and shouldn't make you feel thirsty, says Pavan Jambagi, co-founder of Carnatic Cafe, one of Delhi's best loved south Indian restaurants serving home-style Kannadiga food.
We are sitting at his newly opened ice cream store Jaatre at Meherchand Market, the same south Delhi address which now houses his famous restaurant dishing out delectable bombats and paddus, not to mention, Malleshwaram 18th cross dosas, the perennial favourite. Nine years after he first launched Carnatic Cafe, Jambagi is ready with his first brick-and-mortar ice cream store at a time when Delhi has already lost two peak ice cream-selling seasons of April, May and June to lockdowns. "The time has come to be prepared for the worst. One can only hope the third wave doesn't happen. I am hopeful people will now start coming back," says Jambagi, who began online delivery of Jaatre ice cream some five months ago.
Jambagi started experimenting with an ice-cream machine at home five years ago when patrons at his restaurant would ask for cold desserts after a hearty, wholesome meal. Soon the restaurant started churning out dollops of inhouse ice cream delicately perched on leftover coconut shells. Pepper, palm jaggery or chocolate orange, the natural infusions worked. And soon the idea for a separate retail outlet began germinating. Work on the physical store had begun in March this year until the second wave stalled everything. "Everyone's stopped their expansion plans. It doesn't make sense to open more ice cream outlets in a market which is highly seasonal, especially Delhi. Everyone's preparing for the next ice cream season," says Jambagi, who recognises Jaatre's journey will begin on a wing and a prayer.
The ice cream industry, an unorganised sector with close to 3,000 players, is reportedly pegged around an annual turnover of Rs 10,000 crore. Maximum sales take place between March and September. Last year, headlines repeated the same story everywhere, "Ice cream industry in meltdown", with estimates pitching losses at Rs 6,000 crore due to lockdowns. Sales were scuppered with rumour-mongering that eating ice cream increases chances of catching COVID-19, even with WHO officially stating there was no scientific evidence for this.
Cumulative loss since March 2020 now amounts to around Rs 12,000 crore, according to experts. "Summer is the critical sales season, so production needs to start two to three months in advance. However, with the lockdown affecting local transport, labour and other logistics, ice-cream makers were forced to sit on this massive inventory. Experts are giving their opinions about the third wave, but it entirely depends on two things: the rate of COVID-19 vaccinations and adherence to COVID-appropriate behaviour by the public," says Sudhir Shah, president of Ahmedabad-based Indian Ice-Cream Manufacturers Association (IICMA) and managing director of Scoops ice cream in Hyderabad. "A lesson many of us had to learn the hard way over the last year and a half is that an online point-of-sale is mandatory for any business today," says Shah, emphasising how IICMA members have to become more creative in reaching customers and newer markets apart from designing campaigns and promotions to cope with declining sales. "Cooperation goes a long way in keeping a business afloat. Ice cream companies who are not part of the IICMA should consider joining since companies can benefit from various synergies," adds Shah. Kwality Wall's, Naturals, Cream Bell, Vadilal, Havmor are some of the brands represented in the 80-member strong collective of IICMA.
But with the ebbing away of the second wave, there is definitely a shoring up of confidence. India's pioneering artisanal brand, Naturals ice cream, lost 86 per cent of sales in peak summer months of 2020, compared to 2019 figures, but company representatives report that June this year witnessed their best sales for any month since COVID-19, indicating a positive trend in the coming months when they hope to reach pre-COVID sales. In the last year and a half, they have employed innovative strategies to stay on top of consumers' minds. "We launched our 'Tough Tub' campaign, assuring our consumers that our family packs are safe and cannot be tampered with. The other two important decisions we took was first, partner with cloud kitchen operators to sell our ice cream online to places where there are no Naturals outlets available. And secondly, have a direct-to-order platform ready to cater to customers who prefer having end-to-end experience with Naturals and avoid additional charges that online aggregators added," says Srinivas Kamath, director of Kamaths Ourtimes Ice Creams Pvt Ltd, the company which owns Naturals Ice Cream.
Interestingly, while most of the established brands have struggled with losses, the lockdown saw a surge in small-batch, boutique ice cream brands which catered to consumers directly from their websites and social media handles. New-age brands like Emoi started selling at select retail stores, Big Basket, 24seven, among others. Many turned icecreamists in lockdown and found patrons by highlighting their handcrafted, no-stabilisers/emulsifiers/artificial flavours credentials. Gurugram-based mother-daughter duo, Ritu Gupta (50) and Mridu Gupta (24), started hand-churning ice cream in their kitchens around April last year for friends and family. By June 2020, when the lockdown lifted, they were ready with their weekend company MG’s Handmade Ice Creams curating little-known flavours on a WhatsApp circulated menu with close to 100 orders a month. "This year we resumed operations after lockdown and June 2021 has been the best month where we earned the maximum profit with 150 tubs which cost Rs 650 apiece," says Mridu, a fashion stylist.
Did you know?
How did one crank out ice-cream before refrigerators? One of the more popular ways was the pot-freezer method which French cooks loved to use. A laborious enterprise, where ice was chunked out of lakes and ponds in the winter months, it would then be stored in the ground or brick ice houses with straw providing the much-needed insulation. In the French pot method, a bowl of cream was placed in a bucket of ice and salt. Come 1843, the hand-cranked churn, patented by Nancy Johnson, replaced the pot for a faster, smoother finish.
