DON Dennis and his wife Emma have been running their milk and ice cream business for the past three years. As one of the few commercial producers of ice cream in Argyll, the company aims to raise awareness of the produce available in the region by using unusual flavours such as bramble and whisky. The dairy pasteurises milk the way it was done 50 years ago in Scotland before demand for a cheaper product.
Name: Don Dennis
Age: 61
Position: Director
WHAT’S YOUR BUSINESS CALLED?
Wee Isle Dairy.
WHERE IS IT BASED?
Tarbert Farm, Isle of Gigha, Argyll and Bute.
WHY DID YOU SET UP THE BUSINESS?
MY wife is a dairy farmer and we discussed making ice cream four-and-a-half years ago but we had just put our house on the market so decided to wait. Three-and-a-half years ago, the price of milk collapsed in the UK and worldwide so it became clear we couldn’t wait any longer.
My wife provides the milk and I make the ice cream on an AGA in the kitchen. I attended an ice cream course in England which taught me a little bit but I learned the most from a mentor provided by Safe and Local Supplier Approval (SALSA) because they understood the ice cream industry in Scotland. Making mediocre ice cream is simple but making the best ice cream is a challenge.
HOW IS IT DIFFERENT FROM COMPETING BUSINESSES?
THERE are very few artisan ice cream producers in our area – I only know of one other in Argyll. We stand out from because we use milk from our own cows and milk is 70% of the recipe.
We have had wonderful success with flavours. Bramble and whisky is our second-best-selling flavour after vanilla. We use fruit juice concentrate as well as freeze-dried berry powder in our strawberry and vanilla ice creams. Lots of Scottish ice cream companies just use flavouring. We are also one of the few artisan ice cream producers in Scotland using vanilla extract – the cost has skyrocketed in the past year from about £80 a kilo to £500 a kilo so people are using synthetic vanilla or removing it as a flavour completely.
WHAT IS YOUR TARGET MARKET?
THE target is the discerning customer. It is not the cheapest ice cream they can buy but we make the best ice cream around. We sell to village stores, hotels and restaurants so a lot of our market is local.
One of the ice cream world’s secrets is that companies inject air into the product. You can’t make ice cream without this because when liquid turns into ice crystals it develops pockets of air.
A lot of ice cream in supermarkets is more than 50% air and sells on volume rather than weight. For example, the carton will say it is one litre but that could contain only 400g of ice cream. If you run a big company you can inject more air into ice cream. It is good for the consumer because it can be scooped more easily if it has 70% of air bubbles and companies can make their product cheap. Our ice cream is only 20% air.
WHAT DO YOU ENJOY MOST ABOUT RUNNING THE BUSINESS?
THE creative pleasure of making a new recipe. Our newest flavour is gin with citrus and people love it. We get good feedback on our milk.
Around 50 years ago, all milk in Scotland was pasteurisedby putting it in a tank at 63C and leaving it for half an hour.
Then supermarkets came along and put pressure on the dairy processing industry for cheaper milk. The old style of processing soon died out quickly in favour of high-temperature pasteurising.
As far as I know we are the only dairy in Scotland pasteurising the old way. We get feedback from people over 50 saying it reminds them of what they have been robbed of. We won a Quality Food Award for our milk last year. They are regarded as the Academy Awards for the UK food industry. I drove the milk sample all the way to London but it was worth it.
WHERE DO YOU HOPE THE BUSINESS WILL BE IN 10 YEARS’ TIME?
I THINK it will be running fairly similarly to how it is run now. We would like to get low-key automated filling equipment because we are currently bottling our milk by hand. We hope to be an example for other dairy farmers in Scotland. The days of a dairy farm just selling milk are over. Expanding to ice cream, yoghurt or cheese is a necessity given the way the market has gone.
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