November 12 was opening day for Mimi’s Ice Cream in Rockville’s Federal Plaza—the third store in the DC area. The customers were diverse that day but for one thing: all of them were smiling. I couldn’t resist buying two scoops and asking owner Rollin Amore for an interview.
I’ve always wanted to understand the difference between hand-made ice cream and store-bought.
Store-bought ice cream is mass produced. That isn’t necessarily bad, but because of cost pressures there is a lot of air in those ice creams. You can tell there is air in ice cream when it feels light and is easy to scoop. Also, the large manufacturers need to appeal to a broad market, so they can offer only a few flavors. Unfortunately, a premier ice cream company can start out offering quality products, but when it gets bought out by a larger corporation, it faces price pressures that require a change in ingredients and offering.
Hand-made ice creams like ours use better ingredients and are much fresher. Stores like ours need to appeal to a broader customer base, so on any given day we offer far more flavors than you can find in a supermarket.
Mimi’s isn’t the only hand-made ice cream shop in Montgomery County. Do you feel there is enough customer demand to keep everyone busy?
Everybody loves ice cream! Next to water, it’s the most wanted food out there. I call ice cream the “universal donor.” Everybody wants it.
Nevertheless, I do try to distinguish myself by the flavors. Most hand-made shops purchase their flavors, but I make my own from very high-quality ingredients. For example, when I make a run of butterscotch ice cream, I don’t buy the butterscotch—I actually make it in-house. Same with the salted caramel and the coconut cream. I invest all of my creativity in making the flavors.
There are some purists out there who are milking their own cows. I’m not milking cows or pasteurizing milk, but almost everything after that point in production I do myself.
Before opening the ice cream stores you were an investment banker. What guided your transition?
I retired.
Lots of people retire, but not all of them go into ice cream.
I’ve cooked all my life, and I’ve always wanted to build, including building a chain of stores. I found out that I can manufacture ice cream, one thing led to another, and I’m now living my dream.
The previous tenant in this store sold frozen yogurt. For whatever reason, that store closed. Given the similarity between fro-yo and ice cream, how will you avoid the previous tenant’s demise?
The similarity between fro-yo and ice cream in that they look similar, but that’s as far as the similarity goes. The problem with fro-yo is that it lost its luster. All yogurt tastes the same, and it’s hard to distinguish yourself on the basis of taste. In fact, the taste differential in yogurt comes from the toppings, and all the fro-yo stores are offering the same toppings. After a respectable 20-year trend, the entire fro-yo space has become commoditized; everyone is offering the same thing.
What then happened is that you open a yogurt store, someone else opens a yogurt store a few miles away, and your business is cut in half because both stores are offering the same product.
With ice cream the variety is almost unlimited. My store will have an offering, and another store four miles away will have a different offering, so the risk of commoditization is extremely small.
What is your best-selling flavor?
My most popular flavor are the Oreos: original, coffee, and mint. Another strong seller is ube, a purple yam from the Philippines and Japan. It makes for a wonder ice-cream flavor. Chocolates always sell well, as do butterscotch and salted caramel. Of my entire offering, only two or three of them lag in the case. Regardless, no matter what the flavor, it’s always a matter of making a high-quality product.
Ube Root and Powder
What is your favorite flavor?
My personal favorite is coconut! My wife is from Thailand, and my Thai mother-in-law taught me how to make the coconut sweet cream used in sticky rice. I use that as a base in my ice cream, and it makes for a great flavor.
A lot of people don’t like coconut, because they are used to the imitation coconut flavoring. Real coconut tastes a lot different and a lot better.
Anything you’d like to tell our readers?
I’m about flavor. I’m not about toppings, and I’m not about razzle-dazzle. I don’t make ice creams just for the shock value, such as fried mackerel or a brownie bark with cookie batter combo. I make good flavors, and I make flavors that people don’t necessarily associate with ice cream. My menu includes wasabe peas, roasted red pepper, cucumber, and others. No matter what the flavor, every scoop for sale in my case has to taste good.
Mimi’s Handmade Ice Cream, 12274 Rockville Pike Suite E (Federal Plaza), Rockville, MD 20852 (map)
