Are we going to tell a major clothing conglomerate that their pride-time apparel is “too gay” or “not gay enough”? Not our style let the buyers decide. We don’t make a point of defining what our “gay” is, or telling people what we want them to think about us. How do you feel about other brands that traditionally weren’t synonymous with this community lean into Pride? Is it a sign of progress or just the cogs of capitalism? Retailers like J.Crew and Listerine are incorporating rainbow colors and words like “love” and “pride,” but nowhere do they mention anything about the LGBTQ community or use terms such as “gay” or “lesbian” or “trans,” etc. And it’s noticeable how many corporate brands have adopted (or even appropriated) Pride for their own marketing ends. Speaking of branding, Pride-specifically the month of June, which is now celebrated by many as “Pride Month”-has become a brand of its own. One spoonful is all it will take to earn a fan for life.īanan-o-Graham is the new pint-size ice cream version of the in-store banana cream pie soft serve. Our hope is that people see our offbeat branding and give us a try. It’s funny how things work out, because now that is also happening in the ice cream section in stores on both coasts. We’d watch them say “Big Gay Ice Cream?” and sometimes they’d chuckle and walk off but most of the time they were intrigued and would join the line. Even back in the truck days, we’d watch people walk by and see them read our sign, in some cases, out loud.
We knew if we got that right, the rest would fall into place. Since day one our focus has been on creating the best ice cream in the world. I try not to spend too much time worried about the sales projections and growth charts. How many customers in a given location does it take to sustain a store? How many people in the Midwest, for example, would buy from a place that sells products called “Salty Pimp”? (As good as that vanilla ice cream cone with salty dark chocolate and swirls of dulce de leche is.) Have you ever run into that kind of branding or identity barrier? Would you ever adjust your brand, dare we say campiness, for a given market or demographic? For example, Fluffernutter went from a sandwich we loved as kids and turned into a pint. It was a real thrill to develop flavors that were bypassing a shop phase-we love them and are extremely proud of ourselves for developing them. We added three new pints this year, and all of them-Banan-o-Graham, Spicy Choco-Lit, and Fluffernutter-are original pint-only creations that we dreamed up. The cone American Globs, for instance, made the jump to a pint American Globs. In terms of the success of the pints, when we launched our pint line most of the original flavors were reimagined versions of flavor profiles we used at our shops. For the pints in particular, what we have tried to do is re-create the feeling of ice cream hitting your mouth for the first time, having it send the same endorphins and trigger the same sense memory of the fun a kid has when eating ice cream. What is important, though, is that both are a Big Gay Ice Cream experience. They’re not the same experience, and one isn’t better than the other. You got us from a convenience store in a Seattle suburb? Far out!īut you can’t equate getting a soft-serve cone at one of our shops with buying a pint at a drugstore. We keep appearing in new places, and watching that play out on social media is great. How are the supermarket pints doing here and out of state? It would seem difficult to match the soft-serve experience in-store with pints at the local CVS.
Below is our conversation.ĭoug Quint, cofounder of Big Gay Ice Cream. One of Big Gay Ice Cream’s founders, Doug Quint, spoke with Fortune this month about how the business has grown this brand, starting out as a food truck with locations discoverable via social media to one of the nation’s leading LGBTQ brands. Pints come with a suggested retail price of $5.99.
In celebration of both its 10th birthday and West Coast retail expansion, Big Gay Ice Cream also recently released three new pint flavors: Banan-o-Graham (caramelized banana ice cream with graham swirls and graham crunch), Fluffernutter (peanut butter ice cream with marshmallow swirls, micromallows, and peanut praline), and Spicy Choco-Lit (milk chocolate ice cream with spicy fudge swirls and hot cinnamon candy pieces).
Out of the worst recession the country has seen since the Great Depression, and in the span of a decade, Big Gay Ice Cream has grown from happy-go-lucky and social media wunderkind ice cream truck to Ben & Jerry’s competitor status, now with a full retail line in stores on both coasts.