Have you had Charcolate ice cream? No, not chocolate, Charcolate.
This Saturday, Long Beach Creamery will launch the new flavor to celebrate 10 years at its Bixby Knolls location.
The flavor came as a happy accident, the organic ice cream shop’s founder Dina Amadril said.
“It’s basically a chocolate that I burnt,” Amadril said. “I charred it, but I didn’t do it on purpose.”
It turned into a happy accident. Charcolate’s rich chocolate flavor is reminiscent of burnt marshmallow. But because Amadril said she’s not exactly sure how long she left the chocolate to char after turning off the wrong stove burner, Saturday might be your only opportunity to try the flavor.
It’s also a chance to celebrate the success story of a thriving local business.
A decade in, Amadril said she still enjoys the process of crafting new flavors, but most of her time is spent managing finances and other big-picture business matters related to the Bixby Knolls and Downtown stores that now have 20 total employees.
Konrad Freimuth, Amadril’s nephew, moved in with his aunt about two months before the business opened. Over the last decade, he intertwined himself with operations so much that Amadril made him a co-owner a few years ago, she said.
Freimuth crafted the customer experience, which includes offering unlimited samples of the store’s flavors and educating customers on how the ice cream is made, Amadril said.
The tactic is not always popular when there’s a long line, but Freimuth said he finds joy in telling customers why the Banana Chip Sorbet flavor isn’t artificially yellow.
Long Beach Creamery’s attention to detail when making and serving its ice cream has kept customers coming back for years to try new flavors Freimuth and Amadril whip up.
The shop has also become deeply intertwined with some Long Beach residents’ personal lives.
One married couple, who first came in when they were dating, now bring in their daughter to enjoy the organic offerings, Freimuth said, and a custom Long Beach Creamery flavor was served at the wedding reception for former Long Beach mayor and current congressman Robert Garcia.
That flavor, previously called Purrfect Wedding, is now called berry buttercake.
Amadril’s foray into ice cream making began one night in 2013.
After having dinner with her neighbor, Farm Lot 59 founder Sasha Kanno, Amadril ate a homemade peanut butter ice cream crafted by Kanno, Amadril said.
After asking how Kanno made it, Amadril realized she had the same equipment — a KitchenAid mixer attachment — in her garage. So she dove in.
At first, she started making ice cream as a way to relieve stress from the marketing job she had worked for the past 25 years since moving from Rhode Island to Long Beach.
Then, “I got addicted to the way that the cream could translate a flavor,” Amadril said. “So anything I ate, I started thinking ‘I could make that ice cream.’”
She didn’t like the first flavor she whipped up, blueberry malt, but she enjoyed the creative process of tweaking the recipe, Amadril said.
Through posting pictures of her creations to Facebook, she gained a following that was willing to come taste her early creations, Amadril said.
Eventually, dedicated tasters wanted to buy ice cream by the pint, and she started a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the dairy room that creates ice cream for both Long Beach Creamery locations.
She landed her Bixby Knolls location on Long Beach Boulevard by hearing about it from a Facebook friend.
The first day that store opened, Amadril sold out in four hours, depleting her store of ice cream that took her nephew and her four days to make.
Despite 10 years of flavor creation, Long Beach Creamery hasn’t run out of ideas.
One example is their current Midnight Oolong flavor, a black pearl oolong tea that gives the store’s chocolate ice cream “a fudge finish,” alongside best sellers like Burnt Caramel.
One of her employees, Cal State Long Beach grad Kate Maleki, creates the logos for each new pint of ice cream.
Although she has her hands full overseeing both locations, Amadril said she doesn’t see her ice cream-making days ending anytime soon.
“Sometimes I make a flavor just because I like a name,” she said.
Long Beach Creamery will raffle off 10 prize packages for any customers who buy from its Bixby Knolls location, 4141 Long Beach Blvd., on Saturday and Sunday. The Bixby Knolls ice cream shop is open from noon to 10 p.m. on Saturday and noon to 9 p.m. on Sunday.