Gourmet vegetable ice creams as fresh as a daisy

The founder of gourmet baby food brand Fresh Daisy is branching out into the frozen desserts category with a novel range of ice creams and frozen yoghurts made from vegetables.

Aimed at children, but likely to attract adults as well, the Fresh Daisy desserts contain 50% fruit or vegetable, or a combination of the two such as mint and peas (ice cream), carrot and orange (frozen yoghurt) and parsnip and pear (frozen yoghurt), says md Gerrie Hawes.

"It's an innovative way to encourage children to eat more fruit and vegetables, to switch a parsnip from being something nasty on your plate to something fun and unusual. All of the flavours have gone down really well in consumer testing." The sample products were also popular with adults, who are looking for more unusual and sophisticated flavours offered by some other ice cream companies such as Hill Station, she says.

The first new lines should hit the multiples' ice cream fixtures by the end of the year or early 2006, says Hawes. "I'm talking to all of the leading supermarkets. One has already agreed to list them. At first it will probably be just a couple of products. I'm not sure the market is ready for red cabbage-flavour desserts just yet."

Production will be contracted out to a third party manufacturer, she says. "We're still working on the packaging and design and pricing structures. But it will be at the premium end of the market."

The company's frozen organic baby food (pictured) is now stocked at Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury, which display it in shelf- mounted freezers in the baby food aisles.

Unlike a lot of baby food, which tends to be ambient and sterilised, Fresh Daisy is frozen, pasteurised, and packaged in plastic, says Hawes. "Parents are prepared to pay more because they are getting a superior product." The company has also capitalised on anxieties about semicarbazide in metal jar and tin lids being released into products during the sterilisation process, she says. "We just take fresh organic vegetables, steam them, puree them, pasteurise them and freeze them in plastic."

While retailers were initially reluctant to introduce bespoke freezers into their ambient fixtures, more companies have now moved into the frozen baby food market, and retailers are able to stock lines from several different companies together, she says.