[applause] natasha case: thank you guys. first of all, thank youso much for having us. this is reallycool and exciting. we've been lookingforward to it. we're big fans of google. we use your business platformin many different ways since we started. freya estreller: google ads.
natasha case: yeah. the calendar, ads,drive, everything. so we're glad to beable to pay it forward. and just want to ask how manyof you already know coolhaus, have heard of us,have tried the trucks. awesome. freya estreller: not bad. natasha case: youshould be ashamed if you didn't raise yourhands, but we'll forgive you.
so, i'm natasha. this is freya. freya estreller: hi. natasha case: we're here,we have our cookbook which just came out in may whichwe're really excited about. 100 recipes. ice cream cookies,toppings, other things. a lot of architecturebackground on the punny names with the flavorsbecause at coolhaus,
we're architecture-inspired. i used to be an architect. so they have funnynames like mintimalism, which we're actually goingto make for you today. mies vanilla rohe frank berry,which as i'm sure most of you know, you're in a frankgehry binoculars building, so it's particularly aproposto be talking about ice cream and architecture here. and also there's alot about our story
in the book abouthow we got started and how we grew the business. so i hope you enjoy the book. and we wanted tokind of basically show you how to make oneof our favorite recipes from the book, which is thedirty mint chip ice cream. we're going to demothat for you today. one of our signatureand original flavors. which with a couple differentcookies is the buckminster
fuller, or the mintimalism,as i mentioned, is the punny name for that one. and we're also going to giveyou a little bit of history on our brand. how we got started,how we're growing, and where we're goingwith our vision. so, yeah, we can goahead and get started. freya estreller: yeah. natasha case: so the firstthing we're going to do
is actually jump ahead intime a little with ice cream. as far as the process of howwe are able to make ice cream. we're going to time travel here. because you'll noticein a lot of the recipes, the active time isactually quite low. it's like 20, 25 minutes. but ice cream does require a lotof planning and being organized over actually what canbe a several day span. so what i'm goingto do first is i'm
going to take the base,which i already made, so this would be basefrom the future for you. which consists of milk,cream, in this case, actually, whichi'll explain when we're making the base for you,light brown sugar, and egg yolks. so i'm going to go aheadand get that started. freya estreller: andyou guys can definitely follow along in the book.
i don't know-- i think it'spage 40 where the recipe is. the dirty mint chip ice cream. natasha case: yeah, it'stowards the beginning. so i'm pouring all this basei made, i have about a quart of it, into my ice cream maker. we love cuisinartice cream makers. this one is thecommercial grade, which is a compressorstyle ice cream machine. but that run about $300 fromlike a williams sonoma or sur
la table. we also recommend in the booka gel canister [inaudible] which are cheaper. and those run about $50. you just have tofreeze a container that has like anti-freezein it overnight. but they're very accessible. if you get one ofthese, you can make hundreds of ice cream flavors.
so next is we're going to put inour fresh chopped mint leaves. we do recommend organic. in this recipe,it's really special because we don't useany mint oil or extract. it's just the leaves thatgive it the mint flavor. and that's going to give itmuch more of a mojito or mint tea-like minty feeling. as opposed to a supersweet toothpastey mint which we're not into.
i think you'll agree with us. next going in thereis dark brown sugar. like a third tablespoon. third tablespoondark brown sugar. that's when it also-- freya estreller:half tablespoon. natasha case: i'm sorry. half tablespoon. that's going to playto the more kind
of earthy quality ofthis particular recipe. and a little bit,i think, the salt. freya estreller: yes. natasha case: andthen next, we're going to put a pinch ofkosher salt in there. and on this machine, to reallyget it to kind of the ice cream consistency where it's ready tocome out of the machine, that's going to take almost an hour. this machine has a handy timer.
so that's why we're gettingstarted on this now. because it's just going tobe churning and churning. and basically how itworks is as it's turning, it's adding a little bitof air to the ice cream. and it's freezing it. in ice cream, wecall that overrun. it's the ratio ofhow much base you put in to how muchoutput you have. these machines arevery low overrun.
very dense, very high butterfat, the best quality, the best tasting ice cream. so that's the one that werecommend for you guys. there's one morestep to this, which we're going to doat the very end. which is our semi-sweetchocolate chips. does anyone know why wedon't put them in right now? any geniuses? freya estreller: oh, you got it.
audience: [inaudible]. natasha case: exactly. freya estreller: there you go. gravity. natasha case: anyheavier inclusions are just going to sink rightthere and not distribute. so those are going togo in at the very end. but we want ourmint leaves in there so they can infuse the icecream as much as possible.
so now i'm going to jumpforward in time a little bit. and we're going to show youhow to make the actual base. so this base that we're makingis essentially a custard. and, as i said, it consistsof milk, cream, sugar, and egg in this case, we usebrown sugar in the base. light brown sugar. which, again, it'sthis more earthy type. dirty mint, as we call it. in the standardbase recipe is just
plain white granulated sugar. and when you are heating thisup, i'll show you the process, but once it cools, you reallyneed about at least five hours of it cooling to be able torun in the ice cream maker. so that's why it can belike a two day process. maybe you want to makethe base before and not churn it until the next day. so, again, it justrequires some planning. if you're having company over,you want to make ice cream,
make the base either thatmorning or the day before. and then you can run itperfectly the next day. freya estreller: and then we canfollow along also in the book. i think page 29 forthe plain custard base. natasha case: ok. so i have here mytwo cups of cream. just want to measure it out. we recommend organicdairy, definitely. so two cups of cream going in.
all right. next is two cups of whole milk. if you're trying to preparefor swimsuit season, which i don't know why you would beif you're making ice cream, you can go half andhalf or lighter milk. it just won't be asdelicious in texture. but you can kind of tone itdown a little bit on that. next goes in the sugar. freya's separating for meabout a cup and a quarter.
freya estreller: and forthe dirty mint recipe, it's the light brown sugar,not the white granulated. so, oh. freya estreller: oh, oops. natasha case: half. freya estreller: oh. that's ok. natasha case: so you're goingto put half of that total on the burner withthe milk and cream.
and that's going tokind of come together and that's all on high heat. the other half ofthe sugar is going to go separately in abowl with egg yolks. i separated eight egg yolks. and the egg yolksare essentially the stabilizer in the ice cream. they are what's going to giveit the really nice rich texture. if you ever have homemadeice cream in a restaurant
or when you've made it at homeand it can get kind of icey, that's essentially the dairyseparating from the ice. and the eggs helpbind that together. but the reason why we alsohave half of the sugar and the egg separately is thatwhat we're going to do next is temper the eggs. we don't want the eggsto heat up too quickly as the milk, cream, andsugar is heating up. because then you're going toget scrambled eggs ice cream
and nobody likes that. not even we can makescrambled eggs ice cream good. so as the cream, milk,and sugar is heating up, once i get it toa light boil, then i'm going to pour asmall amount of that into the egg yolks and sugar. and sort of gradually risethe temperature of the eggs. and this will makethem not scramble. i would say thatthe vast majority
of the time, the people feel themost challenging part of making ice cream is actually the base. that the most mistakesare with this part. once you get pastthis, you're kind of in the clear with throwingmint leaves and chocolate chips into yourice cream machines. freya estreller: or alcohol. freya estreller: orwhatever you want. natasha case: yeah,feel free to spike.
so yeah, i'm just going tolet this kind of heat up. freya estreller: cool. so while this ishappening, we'll just give a quick overviewon how we got started. right? how did we go from natasha doingseven years of architecture school to us havingcoolhaus in 2000 stores all across the country. so here we are inone of our trucks.
we now have 11 in la,new york, austin, dallas. natasha case: one isvisiting later today. so. freya estreller: whoo! yeah. natasha case: we all reallyknow why you're here, you know? [laughter] freya estreller: justlet us get through this. natasha case: some foodporn for you, you know?
some of our signature flavors. you know, obviously, theproduct is so, so key to us. we really gotstarted just wanting to make things from scratch. and wanting to make aproduct that we want to eat. also wanting to beedgy and adventurous. freya and i both have prettysweet meets savory palates. so doing things likebeer and pretzels, or fried chickenand waffles, brown
butter candied bacon icecream, really just wanting to push the envelope. and also bring in thearchitecture connection. for me, coming outof school, i just felt like what was missingwith what we were studying in architecture wasbridging it to the public and making it reallyfun and accessible. so i had this crazy idea tomake ice cream and cookies and name the combinationsafter architects.
so that was also a bigpart of the impetus for us is to-- we wereon this kind of mission with makingarchitecture digestible. so the flavor on the topis the i. m. peanut butter, for example. which is a play on i. m. pei. chocolate peanutbutter cookie which is now sold in whole foods. you want to do the next?
so, yeah, i mentioned thearchitecture part is really, i think, a big thing that's madecoolhaus really, really unique. i sort of explain it likeben and jerry's and rock n' roll, or late night television. for us, it's ice creamand architecture. it's a little more nichethan rock n' roll or tv, but it works. but it does give us thiswhole other audience. in terms of who's awareof coolhaus and people
really like, i think,this other component. and we do a lot of thedesign for the packaging, the website, thestore internally. i do a lot of it myself. so i think it gives thebrand a lot of authenticity with the look and feel. but a lot of famous architectshave been to coolhaus or know about it. here's frank gehry,your very own.
who's not very tall, asyou can see, at the truck. he's lactose intolerant,it turns out too. so he couldn't eat hisflavor, which was unfortunate. freya estreller: he alsomade a really funny comment at the truck. he was like, you guys--and this was at his office here on the westside-- and he was like, you guys sure are makinga lot of money off of us. and i was like, oh, no, likeoff of starchitects in general?
or just his office? but we'll never knowwhat he meant by that. natasha case: we stillthink about it every morning when we wake up. there's also thommayne who did caltrans. and a lot ofinternational landmarks. most recently, emersoncollege, which is beautiful. i don't know if you guys haveseen it on sunset boulevard. but his flavor isthe thom mango.
so there he is with hisemployees eating the sandwich. so anyway, it's justa really fun component and i hope you enjoy thatpart of the book, as well. freya estreller: sothis is how we started. this is what the trucklooked like when we bought it for $2,900 on craigslist. it didn't drive. we actually had to trick aaato tow it for us to coachella. because we figuredout that if you
got the premiere membership,you got two free 200 mile tows. so-- natasha case: solittle bit of a scam. freya estreller: so that'show we got it there. and those are allof our ragtag group of friends who we bribedwith free coachella tickets. natasha case: they'renot gang members. natasha case: contrary to-- freya estreller: to helpus work that weekend.
and we really went intoit not knowing very much about how to run a food company. i think we got there and thenrealized we need at our booth, because we had a booth too,all four sides of the booth had to be covered forhealth regulations. so we were like, what do we do? we just grabbed tarps offother people's vehicles and started wrappingour booth with it. so really gettingbootstrappy with it.
natasha case: quick break here. this is the cream,sugar, and milk. it's hot enough. it's at like a kindof soft boil that i'm going to pourabout a third of it into my egg yolks andlight brown sugar. again, tempering the eggsand stirring that gently. basically, you don't want tocause like a major chemical equation happeningwith these egg yolks.
no scrambling. so once i've got a nicekind of pale yellow and that's a little hard to see. that's going to goback into the pot. and you can, can you justturn it off basically. freya estreller: yeah,i turned it to 170. natasha case: andthen you're going to turn that pot ontolow so that it's now really just all kindof coming together,
but not on like ahigh boil anymore. freya estreller:yeah, so we want to get it to between 165 and 180which just thickens it enough. and pretty much allthat's left here is just seeing thatit gets to that point. and then you're going to takeit off the heat, let it chill, and then it's goingto go into the fridge. really, minimum fivehours in the fridge. but, again, overnightwould be ideal too.
and i also recommendthat you-- we're pretty much there already. at 170. so you can go aheadand turn this off. i recommend that you, you know,you can make the base in bulk. so that you can use base formultiple ice cream flavors. so you could pick out liketwo or three from the book that you want to make. 80% of the recipes for theice cream use the same base.
so don't feel likeyou have to make base every time you wantto make a flavor. you have three to fivedays to use the base. so, you know, again,if you're smart about it, just alittle bit of planning, you can really makeit work and not actually spend that muchtime making ice cream. there's another shotof the truck and kind of like the spirit, and culture,and vibe of our company.
and, of course, because we hadall those stickers on there, people were asking us forbomb pops and choco tacos, and we were like, no, wehave architecturally themed, all natural, gourmet ice cream. so we're glad it resonated. obviously, learned a lot. there was no signage. no one knew who we were. natasha case: so then we scrapedtogether the mild earnings
from coachella andit was time to fix up the truck and brand it tobe coolhaus and whatnot. so we sent it toeast la where a guy named junior, who was known inthe ice cream truck community as being the person whocould sort of fix up the aesthetics a little anddo some of the interior. the truck lived over at hisshop for a couple weeks. and by upgrade thetruck, basically we mean add a door on it,and an operable window,
and paint it silver. and then actually our logo wassupposed to be done in vinyl. you know, vector files thatsaid coolhaus on the back. it turned out, someonejust handpainted the logo. so that, i guess, was alittle miscommunication. but we felt that itgave it a cool kind of authentic feel anyway. so we were able to hitthe streets with the truck and start to getthe brand out there.
freya estreller:and then in 2009, end of 2009, becausehe started april, 2009. for those eight months, weactually operated illegally. because when webought the truck, we didn't realize that weneeded a bigger truck like that to have the permit to domade-to-order ice cream sandwiches. natasha case: and weneeded four sinks in there. freya estreller: yeah,we needed four sinks.
we only had one sink. so we had a permit forprepackaged ice cream. and we were like, oh,whatever, screw it. we'll go out there anyway. and thankfully, inthat eight months, we were able to build our name,get press, build a reputation. and then we got caughtby the health department. natasha case: then wewere at first friday. and even then, even withthe incorrect permit
for what we weredoing, we were still kind of chummy withthe health department. and we were at first friday. and i actuallywasn't on the truck. we had some of our employees,aka friends, on the truck. and the health inspectorcalled me and said, your guys arescooping on the truck. it's only supposedto be pre-packaged. and i was like,are you kidding me?
i told them so many timesnot to scoop ice cream. how could they have done that? they should only behanding out pre-packaged. i will definitely talk to them. he was like, ok, just makesure it doesn't happen again. fast forward a couple weeks,i'm on the truck scooping ice cream. and they come up in their carand totally caught red-handed. i had a huge line,but they didn't care.
they poured bleach in allthe tubs of ice cream. and it was just a really sad,humiliating day for coolhaus. and essentially, all saidand done, we worked it out and they said, look, if youwant to be able to continue, you have to get amore functional-- freya estreller: and yougot put on probation. freya estreller: fora couple of years. natasha case: yeah, itwas the case of case. that's my last name, case.
and it ended up being justkind of a-- we worked it out in the end. actually, the public defensethat they assigned to me, while the judge was readingall the that we didn't have the right sinks on the truck,and all the violations, she whispered into meand she was like, so, ice cream sandwiches, huh? and i said, yeah. and she said, how much are they?
i said, $5 each. she said, do youdo kid's parties? i was like, yeah,here's my card. that's how i knew wewere going to be ok. freya estreller: thatforced us to really think about the businessand also think about how we were goingto grow it strategically. and we knew that if wewanted to get off the truck, we needed multiple trucksand multiple revenue streams.
so that we couldstill pay ourselves a salary without beingon the truck every day. so we're glad thatthat happened. we raised-- you know, we dida friends and family round. raised $30,000 fromfriends and family. took on a hard money loan. because no one is going to beloaning money to a business that hasn't been in businessfor more than two years. i think the interestrate was like 22%.
it was kind of crazy, but wehad to do what we had to do. so that's actuallyour second truck. natasha case: again, in frontof a frank gehry landmark. natasha case: so not onlywere we starting to scale, but we were really startingto specialize and develop our niches for the brand. something that we didn't reallyplan for in the beginning that ended up being a hugepart of our business was private catering.
and particularly in thatniche, actually, weddings is our number one type of event. we've done over 1,000 weddings. they ended up being, ithink, a really good match because of the customizationcomponent of coolhaus. you know, pick your cookie,pick your ice cream. everyone feels like they'remaking their own unique treat by doing that. and part of the kind ofarchitectural thinking
with the product isi wanted to rethink the envelope with whichthe sandwich is delivered. and that's obviouslythe packaging. so came up with this ideaof the edible wrapper. and there's kind of two pointsthat the edible wrapper brings that are really,really, i think, exciting forcustomers and clients. one is the sustainability side. if you're eating an ice creamsandwich on the sidewalk
and you want to keep kind of aclean environment, when you're done eating the icecream sandwiches, the edible wrapper essentiallysops up all the drippings. and then you can just pop itin your mouth and it dissolves. and i also feel likeit's really hard to find trash cansin la in general, so that's just my pet peeve. so it's a no waste product. the other side is that we canprint on it with edible ink.
soy-based ink. so it's great forcorporate activations. we should've put, we've donea lot of google activations where we've had googlewallet on the edible wrapper. or when it was the operatingsystem ice cream sandwich, i would have been offendedif we weren't invited to come to google and dosomething special for that. so we did a specialandroid ice cream sandwich on the edible wrapper.
but anyway, for weddings,obviously, people like to have thatcustomization side and put theirmonogram on something. the edible wrapperis perfect for that. we have a lot ofbrides and grooms also, they want usto print their faces which is sort of weird becausethen you're eating their faces or throwing away their faces. but anyway, it's a really funkind of component of the brand.
freya estreller: andthen finally, we actually did another, or i guess ourfirst angel investment round. because we wanted toopen up a storefront. at that point, wehad a couple trucks. we were looking to expand intonew york city with a couple trucks. and that's our culver citystorefront right there. and, of course, with allstartups and businesses, you come across a lotof bumps in the road.
it didn't work out withour first angel investor. as we started progressingforward with him, we realized itwasn't a good fit. and thankfully our lawyerhad wrote something in the agreement that if wedidn't take all the money by a certain amount of time, theequity converted back to debt. which was awesome. so we got to keep ourequity, no longer work with that angel investor, nowit just turned into a loan.
and then, while we were underconstruction in culver city-- so it was kind ofa stressful time. we had to stop construction,we came across bobby margolis, who was natasha's dad's client. natasha's dad isalso an architect. and bobby used toown cherokee jeans. and he was looking to investin a cool startup brand. natasha case: and he wasparticularly interested in-- we had just gone intoa few whole foods
when we were connected to him. i did a three store test invenice, glendale, and pasadena. it was doing really well. so we were alreadystarting to grow there. for us, at the time,we just thought, the whole foodaccounts were good, but they were slightly annoying. we had to meet alltheir criteria, and do all thesedeliveries, and it
seemed like a really small,nothing side of the business. however, he reallysaw the potentially and the scalability. freya estreller:yeah, we came to him with financial projections fortwo trucks in every major city. we were like, chicago,miami, st. louis, atlanta. and he was like, no, ladies. no, no, no. we're going to becomethe next ben and jerry's.
are you guys ready for that? like we're going to go towhole foods, sprouts, bristol farms, [inaudible], etcetera, and we were like, but this is so annoying. like putting ittogether and everything. but fast forward a couple yearslater and that is definitely our goal is to be thenext ben and jerry's. there's some of our--that's a happy employee. natasha case: well, tothe point with the-- we
like having the differentsides of the business. at this point, thetrucks are the marketing and on the ground, boutiqueside of the brands. the stores are greatfor sort of showcasing the whole vision of what we'reabout and the company culture. it's a place where everyonecan sort of see and know each other. we have our storage there,our office headquarters, and the trucks loadin and out of there.
so it created justlike a centralized hub for coolhaus company culture. and i feel like that'swhen the brand really matured to the next level. we do now have 70employees nationwide. and they all hold theirhands a bit in the air and look excited all the time. we do also have another storein pasadena in old town. it's actually ashared marketplace,
it's a very coolspace on colorado. i highly recommendyou guys check it out. piehole is in there, pressed. there's a flower companycoming in, a spice company. so that's been good to haveon two different sides of la. different brickand mortar retail. freya estreller: and with this,with the design we worked with, i don't know if you guys haveheard of the design, bitches? natasha case: design,comma, bitches.
freya estreller: comma. natasha case: like we'rethe bitches, not them. but they did ourculver city store, they did superba, bothsuperbas, oinkster. they're very cool. majorly up and comingarchitecture firm. two ladies thatwe're friendly with. so this just sort of mapsout some of the growth. we are prettyambitious and coolhaus.
we've doubled ortripled every year in terms of ourreach and revenue. but you can see how atthe beginning, trucks and scaling the trucks,then diversifying more with brick and mortar andwholesale distribution. then really focusing onwholesale distribution and diversifying that. i think the laterslides will show we kind of finetuned our packaging.
yeah, we started withthat box in the lower left which was really hardto read from the shelf. and all the flavors justhad a black and white label saying what eachdifferent flavor was. so you literally couldn't tell--like, we couldn't have made it harder for peopleto know what it was and what the differentflavors were. but we still made itpast that initial test and were doing wellenough, but by the time
we introduced the new packaging,which is like a shiny aluminum bag, it looks like thetruck with the grill and headlights on there. and the windshield. it's a little hard to see there,but really bright, fun colors. it's a moreaffordable packaging. it's more differentiatedon the shelf. they started performing-- freya estreller: oursales increased by 500%.
freya estreller: sojust, but for here, this is just our gettingto minimum viable product, getting it out there,measuring the feedback, revising the product,making it better, and just like the whole notion ofaction, not perfection when you're starting something. like you just haveto get it out. and so we're glad that we did. and actually i had interns--we had more toned down colors
even on the shiny bags. and i had my interns lastsummer go to whole foods and just kind of askpeople anonymously what packages they wereattracted to on the shelves. or what kind of color schemes. and shockingly, everyonelikes bright, shiny objects with fun, bright colors. so i was like, oh. so anyway, we'rereally continuing
the kind of more brightyellow, the purple, the pink. really fun. and i think for me, asan architect designing this product, as opposed toa consumer packaged goods designer, it doesn'tlook different and weird. but that's whatmakes them stand out. so i think by not playing tothe generally accepted status quo, just kind ofdoing our own thing. we've kind of walkedthrough some walls
because we didn'tknow they were there. and that's what's madethe brand succeed. the next step is nowgetting outside of the-- you don't want to be a one trickpony with ice cream sandwiches. so the pints are new this year. they kind of look like funpaint buckets, in my opinion. but it's asemi-transparent package so you can see the icecream on the inside. and just fun bright colorsthat speak to the brand.
the bars also are out this year. the flavors are reallysweet meets salty. one of them'stahitian vanilla bean dipped in salted caramel milkchocolate rolled in pretzels. ones like a nutella bar andsalted chocolate and almonds. one's coffee oreoand salted chocolate. and then anotherreally important way that we diversifiedis this book. what's really amazing and funabout the book is it sort of
brings everything full circle. as much as we can get theprepackaged sandwiches to as many people aspossible with distribution, this is a whole other way tobring our product home to you. you can make itat home yourself. and these are reallyour homemade recipes more that we started with. and a lot of insightinto way more flavors, obviously, thanwe can ever put on a shelf.
so we just love, again,bringing the product to as many people as possible. the book has been such anincredible way to do that. and i know and think youguys will really enjoy it. so yeah. freya estreller: as wewait for this ice cream to harden a little bit more. do you guys haveany questions for us before we try some of this andthen release you to the truck?
audience: [inaudible]? natasha case: it'sgetting there. and by the way,we're just trying to get this to likesoft serve texture. and then it goes in the freezer. you don't eat it rightout of the machine. freya estreller: but you can. natasha case: i mean,there's no hard rules here. like, you can't go wrong.
all right, yes. audience: is this thing on? yes. i see you guys in a lotof tech-related events. is that something you targetedexplicitly or [inaudible]? natasha case: you know, i wouldsay that coolhaus lends itself so well to so manydifferent worlds. we've done a lot withfashion and entertainment, a lot with tech.
it's just people whoare forward thinking and who want to be adventurousabout what they're eating. that's what we really gotinto with the ice cream. is that it has such a broadreach and broad appeal. but i will say we also,i think, set up the brand so that it is a goodcanvas for other brands. like things likethe edible wrapper. the trucks get branded a lot. totally like the staff,whatever a brand wants
them to wear in an activation,i'm like, they're all yours. don't tell them i said that. i'm like, they'll wear anapron and a hat or whatever. so we do, i think,mesh well with a lot of different types of companies. it really just has to do withenjoying good food and, again, being adventurouswith what you like to eat as far as ice cream. audience: so i couldn't helpbut notice the "dexter" wrapper.
so what's the storybehind that? [inaudible]. natasha case: yeah,i mean i think that is a really good sequiturfrom the last question. so last year, weactually got approached by showtime for thefinale season of "dexter" to do something really specialto kind of commemorate it and see it off. and they came to us,i feel, very much because we havethe boutique side
with the trucks andthe brick and mortar. and the innovation and thekind of small team who can think big, the coolflavors, but we also have a more growingnational business arm, which was thatwholesale distribution. so they saw us as thecompany they could partner up with that could do alittle bit of both for them. so what we did is theykind of commissioned us to do a flavorfor that season.
you've got to be a littlecareful with the murder and ice cream theme. you know, that can be touchy. but at south bysouthwest in 2013, we had the bloody orangewhich was blood orange. and then we had the killer combowhich was tahitian vanilla bean with a bloody cherry swirlwith two different cookies. the two sides of dexter. and we did sort of a testat south by southwest
in an event to seewhich was more popular. the killer combo won. so we had that at ourstores all summer. they wrapped our trucksin la and new york and we did like 50 hoursof giveaway on the streets to promote that flavorand the finale season. we had one of thedetectives on the truck. freya estreller: masuka? natasha case: yeah, masuka?
i don't know ifyou watch the show. freya estreller:i forget his name. natasha case: giving it away. so that was fun, kindof celebrity angle. and then we did apre-packaged version. actually designed the bag forthem because that's what i do. and we took it to allof our trade shows where we work withretailers and they loved it. so so many stores,like whole foods
here in southerncalifornia, sprouts, tons of markets around thecountry ended up picking it up. and it was sold in groceryall over the country. and then also we had itavailable for shipping online. a lot of people orderedit in our online store. and we shipped it out to them. so it was just an amazing wayto partner with another brand, showcase us, and showcase them. and do something really cool.
audience: [inaudible]but how did you learn how to make ice cream? natasha case: in studio. you know, i think that'salso a big point of the book. our feeling is wedon't want to make it intimidatingand unapproachable. ice cream is fun. and if we can do it and wedon't have a formal cooking background, youguys can do it too.
and i think once you get thebasics of ice cream, literally, the base down, it'sjust such a great canvas for innovationand experimenting. and you can do a lotwith it without being like a trained pastry chef. so i think you can get onegood cookbook like ours and you can reallyteach yourself. and get to be quite anexpert at it pretty quickly. freya estreller: yeah, actuallythe dirty mint that we're doing
was actually an accident. or sort of like partlaziness, part accident. we looked up a recipe-- natasha case: likeall good things. freya estreller: formint chip ice cream. and randomly it was,like, who was it? something like isaacmizrahi's mint chip ice cream. so random. and it called for strainingthe mint leaves out
of the ice cream. and we were just kindof lazy, or forgot, or didn't read the instructionswell, and left it in. and then it called forwhite granulated sugar, but we ran out. and only had light brown sugar. and this is where thelaziness comes in. we didn't want to go outto get the white sugar. we're like let's just use brown.
and then when we tried it withthat combo and the mint left in, you guys will try it,it's a whole nother world of mint chip ice cream. so it was happy accidentslike that where we realized like, oh, we can reallyjust get creative with this. natasha case: the cookiesare a little harder. i'm not going to lie. audience: do youuse cream that's ultra-pasteurizedor [inaudible] which
flavor difference in ice cream? natasha case: yeah, notnecessarily ultra-pasteurized. i think lessprocessed is better. and you want it tobe on the fresh side. also the eggs should benot on their way out. i've even made ice cream withraw dairy before, actually. which i thought was delicious. and that goes badreally quickly. so i just had to finda good use for it.
and to that point, a fun tipfrom the book is with sorbets, they're a great thing to do withfruit when it's on its way out. like how it's sort of famousthat you make banana bread with bananas asthey're almost rotting. fruit when it's almostpast the point of even just wanting to eat it on itsown is perfect for sorbet. because it has thehighest sugar content. so i actually findthat ice cream is a really great utilitarianway of not wasting products.
whether it's the dairy or fruitthat you could throw away. freya estreller: awesome. well, i think, i-- natasha case: yeah, we'regetting pretty close here. perfect timing. freya estreller: we'regetting really close. and maybe if we can getsome spoons off the truck or is there, do you guys havelittle like taster spoons? i totally forgot about that.
i want you guys to come uphere and taste the base. so you guys knowwhat the base should taste like and the consistency. and that also taste the homemadedirty mint chip ice cream, which you guys will beable to make at home. natasha case: onthe other side, i don't know if there's any,like, beer snobs out there. we wanted to do this chocolatestout ice cream with pretzels. and we told one of our kindof non-beer snob, slightly
non-foodie employees to go andget like a chocolate stout. try to find rasputin if you can. and he insteaddecides to buy spaten. i don't know if you know, it'ssort of like german corona basically. freya estreller:it's like a lager. and just brought itdirectly to the facility and they started running it. and so when we gotthat, when it was done
and we were tastingit, i'm like, something is wrongwith this beer. or it just. freya estreller: you couldtell it was light-colored. it's supposed to be like thisdark, rich chocolatey color. you're like, wait a minute. natasha case: he couldn'tunderstand the difference for us, it waslike night and day. so it was very-- and i triedto give that ice cream away.
the spaten ice cream todifferent employees or friends. and for some reason, it keptending up back in the freezer. it was like we couldn'tget rid of it if we tried. it kept showing up again. so it kind of became the bane. but those were, you know,it's a rare full-on failure when it comes to ice cream. you can reallypush it quite far. we have the peking duck icecream which works great.
white chocolate olive,that's a weird one. it's delicious, i promise you. so it's really, it's hardto have a complete fail. write to me if you fail hardcoreand we'll talk about it. freya estreller:awesome, well, yeah, i-- natasha case: one otherthing i want to mention too, by the way, you haveyour books, but the ebook is also really cool. it's a lot of the contentfrom the cookbook obviously.
but the enhancementis the audio. which we focus forthe ebook, since it's on ibooks and itunes. on the music side of coolhaus--you want to go to that slide? natasha case: thisis our austin general manager with tegan and sarah. we have this up hereas an example of we do a lot of-- music isreally important at coolhaus. it's a big part of our brand.
i think michael allen'son the truck, right? freya estreller: mhm. natasha case: we have a lot ofemployees-- including michael allen, you canask him about it-- on the truck who are musicians. we're very supportiveof what they do. we've done coolhausplaylists where we feature all of our differentemployees who are in bands. like, you know, top songs.
and we play that from thetrucks and the stores. and we partner with alot of musical artists to do special sandwiches forthem at acl, at coachella, or for certain goodcauses with them. we did a marriage equalitysandwich called till death do us part, double chocolatecookie, salted caramel ice and we've kind ofgone on tour with them at the hollywood bowl, atthe greek theater, at acl. and handed away the sandwichin the name of that good cause.
so in the ebook,there's little anecdotes that i tell about thedifferent musical artists that we've teamed up withand what their flavors are that we've done with them. and then it connects to playlistby those artists in itunes. so just as a whole kind ofcool other angle on coolhaus. as though we neededto be cooler. i'm just kidding. but anyway, it's fun.
so would recommendthe, i just wanted to mention why the ebook isa little different if you're interested too. well, yeah, i'dlove for you guys to come up here and trythe base and the ice cream. and then the truck is outside. thank you, guys.