We all dream of having an ice cream shop in our kitchens, but for third year uOttawa students Alysha Sharma and Kiana Gloss, it’s their reality! Running their ice cream business, Ice Gold Creamery, out of their home, these bold young women are reinventing the industry of frozen desserts with their delicious new flavours!
Name: Alysha Sharma & Kiana Gloss
Program: 3rd-year Criminology // 3rd-year Bachelor of E-Commerce
Hometown: Ottawa, ON
Favourite ice cream flavour: Alysha – Brownie cookie dough // Kiana – Rocky Road
HCuO: What is Ice Gold Creamery?
Alysha & Kiana: Ice Gold Creamery is an on-demand, online ice cream parlour. We are a 2-person establishment, running all of the financial, creative, ice cream production, and marketing aspects. We offer free delivery to certain parts of Ottawa, as well as a small delivery fee to areas outside our radius. We just started this summer, and have been up and running for about 6 months. We’ve gone through about 3-4 test trials of all of our flavours in order to find the perfect recipes. We are always offering great deals such as Buy One Get One 50% off, or student specials.
HCuO: What inspired you to start your own ice cream company?
A & K: One day we were both just craving ice cream, and we thought it would be cool to try and make our own. After making just a simple vanilla, and a simple chocolate flavour, we realized that it is so tasty and we could make money off of selling this. Within 3 days of our first “trial” we had created our name, logo, contacted suppliers, ordered merchandise, and came up with our business plan. Some of our friends were starting their own companies/restaurants, so I’d say some of our inspiration came from there as well.
HCuO: What makes Ice Gold Creamery unique?
A & K: Ice Gold Creamery isn’t your typical ice cream shop. Our business is run from home, we make and store all our ice cream at home. All our ordering is done online (through Instagram, email, or by texting us your order) and we arrange either delivery or pick up.
We strive to create the most tasteful products using fresh ingredients and making our batches fresh to order. Our customers have told us how rich and creamy our ice cream is, and how they prefer it to store-bought ice cream.
HCuO: How do you come up with new flavours?
A & K: We look around ice cream shops to see what kind of flavours are most popular there, and we just make our own take on the flavours. We also take requests from people about new flavours, if they are popular, we add them to our menu.
Our current flavours are Vanilla, Chocolate, Strawberry, Nutella-Peanut Butter, Brownie Cookie Dough, Banana Chocolate Chip, Rocky Road, Mint-Chocolate Chip, Fruit loops, Strawberry Cheesecake, Matcha Green Tea, Caramel Praline, and Hennessy Twist.
HCuO: What’s the craziest flavour you’ve created so far?
A & K: We have a Hennessy ice cream which is probably our craziest flavour. It is a brown sugar based ice cream with Hennessy cognac. It is probably one of our most popular flavours. We sell this flavour at PPL nightclub, so instead of ordering shots at the club, you can have it mixed with ice cream!
HCuO: What are your goals for Ice Gold Creamery in the next year?
A & K: We’d like to start selling our ice cream to local restaurants, and businesses. We think it would be really nice to have local Ottawa business collaborating. We are currently in the process of collaborating with a Cafe (stay tuned), to create ice cream sandwiches.
HCuO: Where do you see your business in 5 years?
A & K: Ideally we would like to open our own store. We have this vision for how we want the shop to be like and it would be amazing if we were able to one day open it.
Orders can be made at:
Instagram: @IceGoldCreamery
Alysha Sharma (co-founder): (613)-252-8231
Kiana Gloss (co-founder): (613)-857-1058
All images courtesy of Alysha Sharma and Kiana Gloss.