Garrett Nada loves making ice cream but "the truth is, it's not super difficult." And you can often find him in a hot, cramped production room, perhaps stirring cookies into a blend that is mere minutes away from melting.
On this day, Nada's daughter Taylor is working the counter. Now in college, she's been working in the shop off and on for her whole life. "I used to have to stand on a stepstool to be able to see the cash register." And it paid off. "I brought in the tips because I was a cute little smiley face."
When Garrett and his then-wife Nicole Nada founded the business 16 years ago, they wanted to fit into Arcata's needs. "The community likes organic ingredients, locally produced products, and we thought, oh, this would be absolutely great in Arcata."
On this episode of Talk Humboldt - our season finale - Nada walks Keith Flamer and Michael Spagna through the ins and outs of running a small ice cream business.
ANNCR: Inside Arcata Scoop, as freezers hum and children ride a pony sized, coin operated rabbit…
NADA: Go start it up.
ANNCR: … Garrett Nada is doing his intros.
NADA: This is another very special employee because this happens to be my daughter. Oh, when we started the shop, she looked like that.
FLAMER: And your name?
TAYLOR: My name is Taylor Nada.
FLAMER: And how long have you been working with your dad?
TAYLOR: I know there's no visuals, but I used to have to stand on a stepstool to be able to see the cash register here. So before I was allowed to touch the food, I would just do all the money. And I brought in the tips because I was a cute little smiley face.
ANNCR: This is the season finale of Talk Humboldt. And Garrett is going to take you behind the counter at his artisanal ice cream shop to talk about everything from the popularity of halal optional flavor to why you actually need to warm up ice cream.
SPAGNA: You’re mid scoop … Hi, I'm Michael Spagna, interim president at Cal Poly Humboldt, and I'm here with my friend and colleague, Doctor Keith Flamer, who was in mid bite of a scoop of wonderful ice cream.
FLAMER: Fabulous ice cream. Anyway, I'm Keith Flamer, president of College of the Redwoods.
NADA: I am Garrett Nada. I am the owner operator ice cream maker at Arcata Scoop. My former wife, Nicole, and I, started this shop because her twin sister and her husband in Fairfax started a very similar ice cream shop. And instantly we looked at each other and knew that this would be such a nice fit. In our case to the community likes organic ingredients, locally produced products, and we thought, oh, this would be absolutely great in Arcata.
FLAMER: Now we're in the kitchen.
NADA: This is where I make all of the ice cream. You hear buzzing perhaps. We have a lot of freezers in this room. It produces a lot of heat. I turned the fan off to make it easier to listen, but it's going to get warm in here because of these freezers. So on the far end over there, we have, what is considered our hardening cabinet, or our deep freezer. So when ice cream comes out of the machine here, it is very susceptible to melting. It's like halfway frozen. It's sort of soft-serve in a sense. And then once it comes out of here, then I mix in ingredients. For example, cookies and cream. I mix that in by hand. And then it has to very quickly go into our deep freeze or hardening.
SPAGNA: So you got to transfer that pretty quickly.
NADA: Very quickly. I'm usually hustling because it's pretty warm in here. And then that freezer is held at about -15 to-30 degrees, depending on how many flavors are in there. And they need to stay in there and freeze for about nine hours. And then once they come out of there, they're very frozen - too hard to scoop. They're unusable. Yeah. So they actually have to warm up in our regular freezer at zero degrees for about five hours.
FLAMER: What is your ice cream making day look like?
NADA: Well, I'll say, without making anybody jealous, it's awesome! It's the best. I come in and I make ice cream, and the truth is, it's not super difficult.
FLAMER: Okay, you come in at four, five?
NADA: I usually come in at about 8 to 8:30 after high school drop off. I don't always know what I'm going to make because it depends on what was eaten the day before. So I come in the morning, assess what we're low on, what we need, what category of flavor we need. And then depending if I have that ingredient, I will make it.
FLAMER: How long does it take you to prepare all that ice cream? What's the process you use?
NADA: Well, all ice cream I make on one day is only available the following day. So I'm working a day in advance. So I'm predicting what's going to be needed the next day just because of freezing time. So we're talking about, you know, 12 to 14 hours when a batch comes out of the machine. <Off mic: You need a hand?”>
SPAGNA: That's an impressive recipe. What you're hearing in the background is one of, very excited customers that's on a carousel rabbit right now… enjoying her ice cream and riding the ride.
FLAMER: Riding a rabbit that looks like a horse….
NADA: So this is our carousel bunny. We call it Bunny, it’s name is Moonstone. It was made by a fifth generation carousel maker. He created this to be sort of a stationary carousel. So it's a coin-op, single horse, carousel? It's a bunny. In this case, they're handmade, incredible creatures. And they were, they were really the brainchild of Nicole.
FLAMER: So her legacy lives on.
SPAGNA: Okay, that's pretty impressive.
FLAMER: So when we were in the kitchen, we saw a menu of… how many ice cream flavors do you sell?
NADA: Generally they'll be 12 in the case at a time.
FLAMER: How do you decide which ones to offer?
NADA: Well, it's a good question. I generally, rather than follow a formula of ice cream flavors, I follow a formula of ice cream categories of flavors.
FLAMER: Talk to us about that.
NADA: So I always like to have something that is a fruit, something that has nuts, something that is a chocolate-based flavor. I always have coffee something. It might be straight coffee ice cream. Right now, I believe it's coffee chip. I try to always have something for everyone. The kids look at the cardamon ice cream and they're like, that's weird, I don't want that.
SPAGNA: So with the categories, do you also have a wild card flavor? I notice you have some experimental stuff.
FLAMER: Jalapeno ice cream going on.
NADA: Yeah. So I do a jalepeno ice cream every once in a while. And some people, it’s their favorite ice cream. They tell me, hey, you always should have jalapeno, where's the jalapeno? But for the most part...
SPAGNA: They're one out of 100?
NADA: Very much so. Maybe one out of a couple hundred, but I like having the odd ones, the experimental flavors, you know? I like odd people too! I do acknowledge that most people are going to buy the mint chip over the jalapeno. So I got to have, like a mint chip or a cookies and cream or a vanilla fudge swirl, something mellow, it's all about the balance. I like to have something for everybody.
FLAMER: You're a great example of not focusing on what you want, but somebody saying, I want to be open to meandering into something that really speaks to my soul.
NADA: I mean, I love what I do, so I'm lucky there. But, it really came from a desire to fit into the community. I love Arcata, I must admit, I love Arcata. I've lived here for just about 30 years, and, when I moved here, I felt so privileged to be here. And I felt like I would go into a business like Los Bagels. And it's just like, this is awesome. The people that started are right there. There's the guy that owns it. And when we started the shop and it worked and it took off, I felt a sense of honor and like joy. That really is hard to reach. I am very, very appreciative.
FLAMER: And we appreciate you.
SPAGNA: Yeah. You can't get better than that. Thank you so much.
NADA: Thank you guys. Really nice.
ANNCR: From downtown Arcata. You've been listening to Garrett Nada of Arcata scoop on Talk Humboldt. Talk Humboldt will share some encore episodes as we gear up for season four. And to get caught up, subscribe to the Talk Humboldt podcast or visit khsu.org.
TRANSCRIPT:
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