Interview with Dan Ziegler, co-founder of Chicago Soydairy

Wednesday, October 19, 2005 by: Steve Diaz
Tags: soy products, soy ice cream, soy milk

https://www.naturalnews.com/012578_soy_products_ice_cream.html

Tweet

---

Ziegler: Right, two longtime friends started it, my partner Ryan Howard and I. We wanted to start a vegan company. We had been vegan for 13-plus years and really weren't interested in continuing our day-to-day, nine-to-five jobs. We really wanted to start something ourselves.

Steve: How old are you guys?

Ziegler: I'm 30 years old. My partner is 27. He's a food processing engineer. He just wanted some help with his food company. So we started doing bulk soy milk for the Chicago area. From there, one of our customers, a café, wanted ice cream and they were like, "You guys do ice cream?" We said, "Yeah, yeah, we do ice cream." So, we rushed immediately out to Target and bought an ice cream maker and started making ice cream with our soy milk. It turned out to be the best vegan ice cream that we'd ever had. Being vegan for 13 years, when I first was vegan, the only thing out there was Tofutti, and Tofutti is not really as healthy as it could be. It is a company that makes kosher food, nondairy kosher food. Later on, there was SoyDelicious and Soy Dream; they're okay. They were good substitutes, but we really wanted to make a super premium ice cream that was vegan and tasted like ice cream. That was our goal. We wanted to make a vegan ice cream that tasted like ice cream, so my partner used his Purdue-trained skills and made a formula for ice cream.

It turned out amazing, so we started selling it to local restaurants in Chicago and the business for vegan ice cream just went through the roof. They started making shakes out of it. There was this one restaurant, Chicago Diner, that used to use SoyDelicious and Soy Dream; you know, they would go through a pint or two pints a month. But as soon as they started using our ice cream, they went from selling about 100 shakes a month to selling 800 shakes a month. Now, it's over 1000; they're selling 30 gallons a week. You know, we just launched this product last year and it was only available in the Midwest region. We did distribution ourselves: We made our own refrigerated truck and we did distribution up to Wisconsin and Indiana because it had to be close to the Chicago area. United Natural Foods picked us up and we now have Midwest distribution on this. They're making their first quarter with us next month and we're excited. We're here trying to drum up some interest from West Coast buyers and we're going to take that information to United Natural Foods. They're already interested in East Coast distribution with us. It's just incredible how this product has taken off.

Steve: Wow.

Ziegler: I mean, the bottom line is, it just tastes great.

Steve: The taste brought people back into it.

Ziegler: Yes, it's the taste. People try it and they're like, "I can't believe it!" You wouldn't even know it's not ice cream, you know? And that's what it is. You can say vegan, you can say it's trans-fat free, you can say it's cholesterol free, but the bottom line is: What does it taste like? Our product tastes like ice cream. I guess that answered your first question, I didn't know if you had a second one.

Steve: No, you did very well. So, do you have a website?

Ziegler: It is www.WeLoveSoy.com.

Steve: So, if consumers read about your product and they want to look for it themselves, where will they find it then, the Chicago area?

Ziegler: Well, it is in the Chicago area – Milwaukee, Madison, Indianapolis, Bloomington – but you know, like I said, we just got Midwest distribution, so it's going to be all throughout the Midwest.

Steve: Yeah, the next year?

Ziegler: In the next couple of months, United Natural Foods is going to put us in the catalog and it's going to be on sale. We're going to hit the sales trail as soon as we get back from the show and, yeah, it'll be popping up all throughout the Midwest with the East Coast to come very soon.

Steve: Great, thanks so much for talking with us.

Ziegler: Thank you.