MONTPELIER — Look out Ben Jerry’s. There’s a new kid on the block.
Brandon Darmstadt and his Arnie’s Ice Cream company could be serious competition, given time and perseverance.
There are some surprising parallels between them.
Ben Jerry’s got its start in 1977 with a $5 correspondence course from the Penn State University Creamery. In 2014, Darmstadt took a weeklong crash course in ice cream making at the same university. At 17, he was the youngest student ever in the class.
Also an incentive for Darmstadt was to replace the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream scoop shop in Montpelier that closed years ago.
Both businesses began as homegrown cottage industries. Ben Jerry’s started production in a converted garage in downtown Burlington. Darmstadt began experimenting with batches of ice cream at home in Middlesex, and then created an 800-square-foot production facility in Montpelier, down Gallison Hill Road from his high school alma mater, U-32, where it all began while he was a student.
He had started the business before he began driving, and was selling ice cream cones from a cart in front of Montpelier City Hall after he graduated high school last summer. He just turned 19 in January.
He’s already selling ice cream in Montpelier at Uncommon Market, Sarducci’s Restaurant and The Skinny Pancake; at the Plainfield and Adamant co-ops; and at Red Hen Café and Bakery in Middlesex.
Why Arnie’s? It’s named in honor of Darmstadt’s grandfather, Arnold Golodetz, who passed away a short while before the company name was decided. His grandfather apparently disliked the name Arnie, but loved ice cream and his first grandson. Darmstadt actually answers to both Brandon and Arnie.
Darmstadt produces staple flavors like vanilla, chocolate and mint, but also specializes in exotic tastes such as coffee caramel crunch, spiced orange, chai latte, pistachio, and, most tantalizing, Aztec Chocolate (dark chocolate, a kiss of cinnamon, and the surprise kick of cayenne, leaving an afterglow of heat, unusual to say the least when one thinks of the cooling appeal of ice cream). Look this month for Chocolate Strawberry and Rosewater (Valentine’s favorites); and coming soon, Maple Fudge Cookie, and — wait for it — Spicy Maple Bacon?
Darmstadt admits to testing a couple flavor failures — pickle (way too salty) and barbecue (it didn’t work with the dairy) — but it’s all part of the fun of making new discoveries, he says. “My flavor is my product. It can be difficult going into the ice cream business because there are a lot of big companies out there, so I have to succeed in producing good flavors.”
He also plans to move into soft serve, sorbets, gelato, and frozen yogurts. “That’s a whole other mix to deal with,” he said.
Darmstadt prides himself on sourcing local ingredients — maple from Five Forks Farm, coffee from Vermont Coffee Roasters, Benito’s Hot Sauce (in the Spicy Maple Bacon), caramel and toffee from Red Kite — to support the Vermont economy and reduce the carbon footprint of transportation. The ice cream base comes from St. Albans Dairy Co-op.
Pints cost $5, half-gallons $12, and he offers a 10 percent discount for membership purchases.
Early Beginnings
Ever entrepreneurial from a young age, Darmstadt dallied with various ideas for a business: a chain of luxury resorts, an armored vehicle company, a restaurant.
The genesis of the idea to make ice cream came in the summer of 2013 as he floated on the waters of Half Moon Pond during a family camping trip in his namesake town of Brandon, where his father grew up and his parents were married.
He figured he could start a company while he was still in school, and in the fall of the same year started to work on a business plan as a 16-year-old sophomore.
Fortunately for him, he was enrolled in the school’s pilot independent study program that allowed him to explore a variety of study courses and career tracks.
“Traditional schooling didn’t really work for me, and I wasn’t doing very well in school,” Darmstadt recalled. “So I was on a nontraditional path, and tried a lot of different studies — ornithology, nature education, gunsmithing, filmmaking, stuff with computers. I was always interested in food and thought about a restaurant. Then I had the idea about ice cream.”
He enlisted the aid of fellow student and friend Ryan May, of Middlesex, experimenting with ingredients and recipes in Darmstadt’s kitchen, freezing batches of ice cream in a KitchenAid mixed freezer bowl attachment.
They also researched equipment and worked on a business plan with the help of school faculty. May subsequently dropped out, but recently returned to work as a production assistant.
“Brandon worked tirelessly,” said George Cook, business program department head at U-32. “He was always researching, looking at spreadsheets, bringing in samples for his buddies, and if they said they didn’t like it, he would work to make it better. He committed himself in his junior and senior years to make this a reality. He was very persistent and he persevered.”
Chris Blackburn, Darmstadt’s advisor and director of the independent study program, added, “A part of his studies turned into how to make ice cream. It led to him going to Penn State, and he came back from that just energized. He made a science of flavor profiles for ice cream and it was really neat to see him move it forward. It was exciting to see him say, ‘Hey, I can do this, I can start an ice cream company.’”
His tutors introduced him to Darmstadt’s mentor, Goober Schaarschmidt of New England Excess Exchange, a national wholesale high-risk insurance agency based in Barre, who helped refine Darmstadt’s business plan and connect him with a bank lender. “When we met, he went over his proposal, and he brought in some samples. When I tried the ice cream, I said, ‘You’ve really got something here.’
“The most important part of any business is the product, and I liked it, so I said let’s work on this together,” he added. “I reviewed his business plan, got him in contact with Community National Bank in Barre — that was the biggest piece, getting them to stand behind it.”
Darmstadt approached the bank’s commercial loan portfolio manager, Dave Rubel, the same way. “He came in with a cooler with some different flavors of ice cream. It doesn’t happen like that very often, that’s the truth,” said Rubel. “It was terrific, and I’ve since purchased a couple of pints from the facility, and it’s delicious.”
Rubel credited Darmstadt with having a sound business plan, backed by solid research and support with additional advice from the Vermont Small Business Development Center — and backed by Darmstadt’s parents as guarantors of a $36,000 loan, mostly to buy equipment.
Chip Darmstadt is the executive director of the North Branch Nature Center in Montpelier, and his wife, Alisa, works in business management and marketing for Fountain Land, a real estate company in Montpelier. Between them, they know a thing or two about business, and believed their son had a worthy business proposition.
“I’m very proud of what he’s accomplished. He’s worked tremendously hard and shown incredible perseverance,” said his father, who is his son’s bookkeeper.
“I look at Brandon and I wonder what else he’s going to do, where he’s going from here,” said his mother, who helped him with marketing and a website. “He’s got a lot of possibilities going for him, and I’m incredibly proud of him.”
Darmstadt shies away from comparisons to Ben Jerry’s, noting they built a funky reputation based in part on “celebrity” themes. “They’re definitely a small business success story,” he said. “I try to differentiate myself from them because they were bought out by Unilever. They claim to be Vermont’s finest, but they’re not really a Vermont company anymore — it’s owned by people in England. I want to bring ice cream back to Vermont.”
His mother said if there is a measure of her son’s vision, ambition, drive and determination to succeed, it is in a comment she overhead him make to a friend.
“His friend suggested that maybe someday Brandon could buy out Ben Jerry’s,” she said. “Brandon said to this person, ‘Someday, I’m going to buy out Unilever.’ He might succeed and become a mega-million dollar business, or, he might move on to something else.”
For more information and membership details, call 316-3128 or visit www.arniesicecream.com.