DISNEY : The Incredible True Story Behind the Star Wars Ice Cream

DISNEY : The Incredible True Story Behind the Star Wars Ice Cream

 

DISNEY : The Incredible True Story Behind the Star Wars Ice Cream

Earlier this month at the junket for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, we felt an awakening … when we ate

some very delicious Star Wars-themed ice cream. It wasn’t surprising that the ice cream, available in two flavors (both are limited editions), was delicious. What was surprising was the company that made it. It wasn’t some nationwide chain available in any neighborhood strip mall; it was New York-based Ample Hills Creamery, a tiny ice cream company where we used to eat back in Brooklyn.

Each flavor has a specific story. The Light side flavor is a “bright marshmallow ice cream with homemade krispie clusters, as well as a smattering of homemade cocoa krispies (to represent the dark side still lurking in the light),” while the Dark side flavor is “an ultra-dark chocolate ice cream with espresso fudge brownies, cocoa krispies, and while chocolate pearls (to represent the light still hiding in the dark, waiting to burst through).” But even better than the stories behind the flavors is the story behind the company, and its unique association with Disney.

DISNEY : The Incredible True Story Behind the Star Wars Ice Cream

We jumped on the phone with Ample Hills Creamery co-owner Brian Smith (he runs the company with his wife Jackie Cuscuna), to get the lowdown on how their ice cream company captured the most coveted franchise in the galaxy.

What can you tell people about Ample Hills if they’re unfamiliar with the company?
Well, we opened four and a half years ago in Prospect Heights in Brooklyn. We make everything from scratch. Our mission is that we build a sense of community around the shared joy of eating ice cream. We’re more interested in a sense of space and place to pass the time, almost more than the item itself. Obviously we care deeply about ice cream and the other thing is we make

everything ourselves. We make the base, the cream, and then we make all the mix-ins—the brownies and peppermint patties and cookie dough and ooey-gooey butter cake—all of that stuff we bake. So we’re as much a baking operation as we are an ice cream operation. And we do it all in total view of the public, through windows, and we invite people into the narrative of what we’re doing in the kitchen. All of our ice cream is aimed at kids, or kids inside of adults. It’s all trying to transport people back to their childhood through flavors. We’re always trying to tell fun stories through flavors.

That’s perfect for the Star Wars flavors. Take me back to the very first moment when you came up with this idea.
I was seven when Star Wars came out. I had Star Wars sheets as a kid. I was in love with Star Wars. For a while I made a living writing bad sci-fi TV movies. It always influenced what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be. And I loved ice cream. When we opened the ice cream shop, I abandoned the writing and sci-fi side of things, so with the new Star Wars movie coming out it came very naturally. We thought we’d try and come up with an idea that we could pitch. We were much more interested in telling a story rather than slapping a logo on something we already had. We wanted to contribute, in some small way, to the universe. That’s why we really worked to come up with a story around the Dark side and the Light side. We were excited to hit on that idea.

DISNEY : The Incredible True Story Behind the Star Wars Ice Cream

What was the process like of obtaining the license?
That comes directly from Bob Iger. When we started selling our ice cream online about a year ago, shipping it around the country direct to consumers, he ordered ice cream. So we sent ice cream to him. About a week later he reached out to me and said, “Look, your ice cream is outstanding and your brand is amazing. If there’s anything I could do to help, let me know.” After we picked our jaws up off the floor, we wrote him back. And since then he’s really become a mentor and an advisor. We just completed a $4 million equity raise to build a factory in Brooklyn. He’s been instrumental in helping me and my wife think through the roles people play and also how to grow while maintaining the authenticity of what we’ve created up to that point. So we correspond on a regular basis. I pitched the idea directly to him. He loved it and brought it on to J.J. [Abrams, co-writer and director of Star Wars: The Force Awakens] and the folks at Lucasfilm. It made it a lot easier.

That’s an incredible story.
It’s very humbling and exciting.

So you get the go-ahead from Iger and you have to create these new flavors. What was it like coming up with them?
I knew with the dark side, it had to be something that was visually dark. So that’s going to be chocolate. We knew we needed to make the deepest, darkest ice cream we could think of. Then we wanted to have a number of forces of darkness within there, so we have an espresso brownie instead of a regular brownie. We needed an element of the light in there, so we were looking around for that and hit upon the white chocolate pearls. The light side was harder. Vanilla would have been an obvious choice but we thought about it some more and marshmallow is even more ethereal and lighter and brighter than vanilla, so it seemed like a better representation of the light side. We also made these regular krispies, which also represents the light, and added in the chocolate krispies to represent the other side. None of it was really difficult, but it was a lot of fun to work through what those pieces were.

You were at the Episode VII press junket with the ice cream. Did anyone try it?
J.J. tried it and loved it. And Oscar Isaac had some. That was about it. But J.J. was very supportive and is very excited about it. That was a lot of fun.

DISNEY : The Incredible True Story Behind the Star Wars Ice Cream

Since you’re  close with Bob Iger, did you send him an email to ask when you could see the movie?
[Laughs] No! I see it on the 18^th like everybody else! I would very much have liked to make that ask but I know when enough is enough.

You can grab your own pints from Ample Hills Creamery, which will ship it anywhere in the country. Star Wars: The Force Awakens arrives in a galaxy near you on December 18.