Trail Town Ice Cream
• I started the year off working on the project with Phil Wu but as Trail Count season became more prominent I started working on the project on my own.
• The previous year’s ice cream was not always consistent in quality so I am told so that was the first issue that I felt I needed to tackle. I started researching all the producers in the area. The search for high quality, local ice cream began. I talked to a few producers and thought about talking to bigger, local producers like Hershey and Galliker’s but decided that they were to large scale for the project. Finally I chose to change producers from Jackson Farms in Farmington, PA to Kerber’s Dairy in Irwin, PA.
• Kerber’s Dairy is a family owned company that originally used their own cattle but now use local cows from a number of farms in the area. I really liked that they still used local cow’s milk. Kerber’s has experience making fruit-based flavors so that was also a reason for the selection. Some of our delicious flavors have blueberries and cherries in them—retailers in the fruit-based towns critiqued the previous year’s ice cream to be icy more than creamy so this experienced fruit-based producer seemed to be a good choice. My final reason for this select was Tom Kerber, who makes the ice cream, was very customer friendly and worked with me to make sure our flavors would be high quality and remain creamy in texture.
• Once the producer was selected I had to find a way to distribute the ice cream to the five towns along the Great Allegheny Passage. Kerber’s delivers but our order does not meet their minimum order requirements. I looked into refrigerated truck rental but everything was out of budget so for this year Phil and I will deliver ice cream in ice chests.
• In order to raise money for our delivery expenses, I coordinated a fundraiser at Connellsville’s Geranium Festival on Memorial Day weekend. We gave away samples of Connellsville’s Youghiogheny Mud ice cream and sold handmade hula hoops. The fundraiser was very successful.
• Now that ice cream is in retailers, I am working on a Trail Town Ice Cream Passport design and will be starting to look at sustainable solutions to some of our hiccups like delivery for the long term.
-Mandy Metzger
