Sweet Ritual Weathers the Pandemic With More Products, More Sustainability: Living the ice cream dream – Food

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Photo by Sprinkles Creative

Amelia Raley, owner of Sweet Ritual, has been heralding the vegan ice cream game for 10 years and still has her fingers in many ice cream cups, figuratively and in the actual delicacies. With the recent transition from co-partnership, Raley is realizing an improvement and standardization of their product while riding the strange waves of COVID-19 disruption for small businesses. She shares her plans with the Chronicle to keep her Austin brand as relevant and popular as ever in the face of the rising trend for dairy-free ice creams.

Raley thought about a recipe for ice cream that would be more scalable than using different bases of different consistency (sunflower, coconut, soy, etc.) and this year decided to use a pea base to carry their ice cream into the future. “When I was looking at the water footprint of bases, I wanted to see if we could use a base that is kinder to the planet,” she explains. “The pea base is tasteless and has fewer allergies – oats are on everyone’s lips right now, but we see a lot of sensitivities.” To prepare for the switch, Raley worked with Eclipse – a vegan ice cream company from Berkeley that ships pints nationwide – to produce delicious Conducts R&D to expand chef-influenced custom creations for use in upscale restaurants across the country. The result of this work will be a continuation of some old fan favorites and an expansion into new taste areas with the full roll-out. Most importantly, the new and improved Sweet Ritual products are more shelf-stable and better suited to wholesale and grocery accounts.

Photo by Sprinkles Creative

Raley began tinkering with ice cream in 2011 as an employee of the original Toy Joy, and in 2018 she focused on streamlining production to make it friendlier to her staff. After working in production herself for years, she wanted to make the work sustainable for the body of the employees in the long term. Getting a pint filling machine was a lifesaver, and it also means more pints will be available in more Austin stores like Wheatsville and Fresh Plus within the next month. “It’s a really fun place as we don’t stir pots anymore!” She laughed.

After a 50-day closure at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Sweet Ritual Scoop Shop on Airport Boulevard was reopened for curb service. Raley rode out the rest of the season with reduced wholesale business and reached some loyal customers via a replica of the shovel shop in Animal Crossing. “The pandemic took away a little bit of fear from the kids about having a virtual place, for example on their birthday – they just wanted the comfort of something normal, so we tried to give them that,” said Raley.

“Our name comes from the ritual way people approach desserts. People are either there to make a good day better or to turn a bad day around. It rarely happens that they are there by mistake. “ – Amelia Raley

Sweet Ritual can be found in the annual Big Nonna’s (Tech Ridge and Parmer), a fun collaboration between Raley and Rob Lordi (Li’l Nonna’s), with purely plant-based pizzas. And of course, ice cream is coming soon. They teamed up through a vegan business owner’s Facebook group that Raley started a few years ago. In another partnership around the corner, exclusive Sweet Ritual flavors are delivered in waste-free, reusable ice containers via Trashless. The Austin company formerly known as Lettuce provides a platform for companies to get their goods into people’s homes without waste. (In addition to the Sweet Ritual Ice Cream, Trashless supplies all sorts of products, including Buddha’s Brew Kombucha, Easy Tiger Baked Goods, Rebel Cheese and more.)

“You know, when we opened in 2011 we were one of the few vegan ice cream parlors on the planet and now the section has exploded!” said Raley. “Now you can’t go to an ice cream parlor without a vegan option, and it’s a huge section on the supermarket shelf. Milk ice cream world. Still, we couldn’t rest on our basic tastes forever, “she explained.” So I tried to dream really big dreams about what I wanted to do in the future, transfer translatable flavors and rephrase them to be more artisanal Ingredients included, like real rose petals and different types of pistachios for the pistachio rose. “

Sweet Ritual is updating their Instagram page with available balls and flavors to include delicacies like Death Metal by Chocolate, Rocky Road 1929, Peanut Butter Chiffon, Violet Crown (raspberry-lemon), Iced Grasshopper (mint coffee chocolate), and Toasted S’mores. Specialties like unicorn poop add even more pizzazz, and the shop also produces shakes, ice cream cakes and a caramelized banana split.

Photo by Sprinkles Creative

Raley is also excited to serve customer requests for more floral and tea-based flavors. She said, “They’re popular right now and really fun to make!” There are also many guest collaborations for flavor collections around the corner, such as KOOP Radio – think Jamaican Gold. “[It’s] Created by some of the personalities who make up the backbone of what Austin is based on how our community looks – like a snapshot of Austin. “

Raley, who spoke at the National Ice Cream Retailers Association (NICRA) conference last year, has come a long way from the friendly toy counter to leadership, expanding her influence from the local community to the whole country. Although the Sweet Ritual “Ice Cream School” – a program that helps others start their own vegan ice cream businesses – has been on hiatus since 2019, the connections made during the program have helped usher in some other non-dairy ice cream stars. Raley opened her establishment to startups like Luv Fats (avocado- and coconut-based ice cream) and Funky Mello (fun, plant-based marshmallow fluff) to help them find their own niche in the Austin market.

With a view to the future, Raley would like to open two more scoop shops and buy as much as possible on site. But world domination is just not their ultimate goal. “Our name comes from the ritualistic way people approach desserts,” she explained. “When I started working with candy, I saw people come in after therapy, an orthodontic appointment, with an A on their testimonial. People are either there to make a good day better or to turn a bad day around. It seldom happens that she’s there by mistake. “

“We really want to put deep roots here in central Texas. I’ve seen the same people come from [their] first date to see their family grow up, “said Raley.” A couple recently bought a house and wanted one of our cakes to go in their freezer first! Little did I know that an ice cream parlor is such a special place for so many people, that ‘neighborhood’ feeling. “

Sweet Ritual Scoop Shop

4631 Airport Blvd., Ste. 125; 78751
512 / 666-8346; sweetritual.com
Sun-Thu, 12-10 p.m.; Fri-Sat, 12-23: 30 p.m.

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