By Stan Bishop
There's certainly a lot more than just quality and wholesome ingredients that can be found in a Ferrands Food product. Aside from the smooth taste and rich flavours of the ice cream and other novelty products, there seems to be something that keeps us yearning and screaming (sometimes literally!) for some Ferrands ice cream. That something is called soul.
I recently got the first inside scoop on what keeps people coming back for scoop after delicious scoop of Ferrands ice cream. But before we tease your taste buds too much, we thought it best to fill you in on just what you’re dipping your spoon into when you remove the lid from a tub of Ferrands ice cream.
Managing director, Charles Devaux, said it all began in the late 1940s with his father, Dennis, supplying milk produced by cows he reared in the Ferrands area near Cul De Sac. (Hence the name Ferrands). Due to the growing demand for milk in the 1960s, Charles said his father built a milk plant in Castries. A few years later, he shifted course a bit and began making ice cream which he sold to pushcart vendors. Charles joined the company around 1970 and began producing other qualities of ice cream.
After a while, restaurants and hotels were added to the list of Ferrands’ growing clientele. From that point on, there was no way but up. Although the Ferrands brand competed with a few local ice cream producers at the time, Ferrands quickly left them cold in their tracks. As demand for the company’s products grew, more flavours were added to the company’s portfolio. Soon the initial vanilla, strawberry and chocolate flavours had additional cold company. Today the company boasts a wide array of flavours of ice cream, yoghurt, choc ice and sorbet that everyone craves for.
Presently, the company’s products are limited to the local market but the company is churning out plans to position its products on the regional market as well. Because of the sensitive nature of dairy products, Devaux said the necessary precautions also needed to be put in place to ensure that the product’s quality is not compromised. Even on the production floor, quality is priority number one when it comes to producing a Ferrands product.
No changes have been made to the secret formula that has been used for decades to produce the ice cream that we so love to scream for. No shortcuts, no compromise. Also, the company uses vegetable fat instead of butter fat in their recipes. Ferrands also uses skimmed milk instead of whole milk. And get this – no preservatives! Ferrands products also have a shelf life of six months.
There are plans for expanding the company’s infrastructure, particularly as it works towards gaining its HACCP certification. The company’s staff base currently stands at just over fifty and that number is expected to increase as the company’s size increases. New products are also in the pipeline and Ferrands is working assiduously to create a better packaging for its products. It’s no surprise why Ferrands was able to snag the Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the Saint Lucia Industrial and Small Business Association (SLISBA) Awards held last March.
Devaux said pricing of Ferrands products are kept at a minimum even as the costs of raw materials and other factors of production increase. Nevertheless, he believes that Saint Lucians need to recognize the significance of purchasing quality local products.
“There are many Saint Lucian companies today producing top quality products. However, there’s a tendency for consumers to want to buy foreign products. What we need to recognize is that the more we buy that’s local is the more positive spin-offs that has for our local economy,” Devaux tells me.
The company also plays a crucial role in the community by taking its social responsibility to heart. Ferrands supports a number of schools and other organizations in various ways. A more aggressive marketing campaign aimed at doing just that is also on the way. Nevertheless, its presence can be felt.
So if you’ve had the chance to watch Ferrands’ nostalgic (and witty) television advertisements or listened to the radio advertisements over the years, you would by now know that Ferrands is deeply entrenched in the national psyche when it comes to cool taste. So ensure that the next scoop of ice cream or the next choc ice you bite into says Ferrands. It’s a Ferrands products and it’s stood the test of time.
And that’s the scoop.
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