Asakiyume mita

As part of my happy role as Frutero ice cream enthusiast, I am pleased to bring you an interview with Vedant Saboo and Mike Weber, who created the Philadelphia-based company.


Vedant and Mike enjoying some ice cream

The two became friends in business school, and in 2019, Vedant brought Mike to India and got him to try tropical fruit ice cream--which he loved. As Vedant recalls in an interview for Authority magazine,

Mike and I thought there must be more people like us who would love tropical fruit ice cream. Ice cream is more than $10 billion market in the US, but overly cluttered with variations of chocolate.

And that was the impetus for Frutero. Mike had prior experience in food and beverage companies--including a leading ice cream company--and Vedant had worked as an investment associate and a business analyst, so they made a good team. To my delight, they agreed to do an interview with me. Mike answered some questions, and Vedant answered others.

( in the beginning )

( People's reactions to Frutero )

( Working with farmers in Colombia )

( Actual ice cream-making process )

( Flavors to look forward to )

Thank you so much for doing this interview! Your ice cream has been one of my joys this year, and I really appreciate both of you taking the time to share about your wonderful venture. I wish you all success for the future. Any final words to leave us with?

Mike:
On each pint we write that our mission is to make the world’s best tropical fruit ice cream. We live this motto, and we’re always looking to improve! Once folks try our ice cream, we definitely want to hear from you! What did you like, and what can we do better?


Mike with a pop-up Frutero ice cream display

Thank you again! And to everyone who sees this interview, do try their ice cream and let them know. 💛

One of the things I loved when first we went to Colombia was the fruit--so many fruits I had never heard of or tried. And one of the things I loved when we went to Leticia was the fruit--so many *new* fruits I had never heard of or tried--and also: the fruit as ice cream.

For instance, at Helados Nai Pata (not actually in Leticia but in the town of Puerto Nariño): You can have araza (Eugenia stipitata), camu camu (Myriciaria dubra), and copoazu (Theobroma grandiflorum), none of which I'd heard of before arriving in Amazonas, or maracuya (passion fruit), guanabana (soursop), coco (coconut), and mora (which means "blackberry," but that picture is clearly a (red) raspberry, so who knows).



I was longing for tropical ice cream when we got home, so I looked to see if any of our local roadside ice cream shops had tropical flavors. Answer: no. This surprised me. I would have thought that the combination of cosmopolitanism from the local colleges and the large Puerto Rican community nearby would mean someone had created one. Maybe my search wasn't good enough? Well, in any case, I then moved to searching online for ice cream with tropical flavors, and I found (cue angel choir)
Frutero
(~ ~ its website ~ ~)
Passion fruit! Guanabana! Coconut! Guava! Mango! I was so excited. And they had stores in my area! I went to one, searched the ice cream aisle ... nothing.¹ Desperate, I went and ordered myself a six-pack.

And so it came to pass that one day a whole box of ice cream, preserved with ~ ~ dry ice ~ ~ arrived at my house:



And one of the two founders included a letter asking me to let him know what I thought--and after I tried the guanabana (which took me RIGHT BACK to Colombia), I wrote him an effusive letter, and THEN he set up a one-on-one focus-group session to collect my thoughts on ice cream, Frutero, its various flavors, and so on, all of which charmed and delighted me even more.

Meanwhile, I was noticing things about the ice cream. For instance, that it makes where it sources its fruit part of its package design (and most of it comes from Colombia) and how many of each fruit is in a pint:

( guavas from Colombia--four pink guavas! )

I went back to the company's website and discovered that supporting farmers in Colombia as part of their mission. (I understand that claiming something is not the same thing as accomplishing it, and that how accomplishment is judged is a whole other issue, but at the very, very least, it shows that you want to appeal to people who care about the mission, and if those people are your customers, they are liable to keep you honest.) So I was even more favorably disposed to the company. Meanwhile, they sent me a bunch of coupons and explained to me why I hadn't been able to find their ice cream in the supermarket I'd tried (see footnote below).

( stuff about Frutero in supermarkets )

As you can see, I like the ice cream a whole lot--I think the coconut has the most intense flavor, followed by guava, and I really like the guanabana and passion fruit too. The mango is very nice, but not quite as intensely mango-y as, for example, the guava is guava-y. The tangerine is very good but familiar, and the pineapple I haven't tried.

I wanted to share in case YOU TOO would like to have some tropical ice cream. If you have a store near you, you can click on the link at the website to get a coupon for two dollars off two pints. The store are mainly in the northeast and California, but there's a scattering thought the south and southwest. In the north or in other countries, alas, you cannot access this (though people like anna_wing no doubt have access to local tropical ice cream).

Because I'm in promotor mode, I'm also going to interview the founders. I admire people who create things, and I'm very interested in aspects of their story (like the connection with Colombia), so look for that in November 😌

¹There was a good reason for this: the supermarket I was looking in (Stop & Shop) carries it in its natural foods section instead of its ice cream section.