Local Food Heroes - Stephen Wheeler speaks to Jane Veer of Winstone's Ice Cream
WINSTONES Cotswold Ice-cream is perched on top of Rodboroug Common with views of the five valleys of Stroud. Managing director Jane Vear’s family has been making and selling ice cream on the same hilltop since 1925, when her grandfather Albert made the delivery rounds with a motorbike and converted sidecar.
Their deliciously creamy ices are bought by a wide range of outlets including local supermarkets, delicatessens, National Trust properties and leisure centres.
Creed Foodservice distributes Winstones icecream to caterers across the country. Jane told me that 40 per cent of their sales are still from their fleet office cream vans and the shop next to the dairy. “Thirty years ago 95 per cent of our sales were from the vans but domestic freezers and the supermarkets forced us to find new markets,” Jane said. The spiralling costs of street trading licences, and the tendering system for tourist spots, have also endangered the ice cream van with its trademark musical chimes. Winstones use 50 tonnes of Cotswolds cream a year, to make around 10,000 litres of icecream a week, with the same recipes they’ve used for generations. “One of my jobs is chief weather watcher for the company,” said Jane. “If a hot spell is forecast we have to double our deliveries of raw materials.” Conversely, poor summers impact dramatically on their sales. “The devastating floods in the summer of 2007 were a business challenge I wouldn’t want to re-live,” Jane said. New flavours are developed in their kitchen at home. I sampled the tangy rhubarb crumble ice cream which won a gold medal at the recent Great Taste awards. Surprisingly, vanilla ice cream has been replaced at the number one spot in the flavour charts by mint choc chip. Next spring, Winstones will be launching their new blackberries and cream flavour which is a gorgeously simple combination.
Top chef Marco Pierre-White and locals Lily Allen and Princess Anne’s family have all stopped by at the Winstone’s shop in Rodborough, to sample some of this great Cotswolds ice cream. It’s truly another Gloucestershire food
success story.
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28th November 2009
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