A Bite With…Rosebud Ice Cream Founder Sam Rose

I scream. You scream. We all scream for pouched ice cream!

That’s the attitude one ice cream brand is taking by launching an innovative pouched soft serve product. Rosebud Ice Cream, based in Denver, Colo., is launching individually portioned, soft-serve frozen treats in pouches, banking on the innovation resonating with premium-minded consumers looking for a mess-free alternative to cones or cups.

The brand was founded in 2020 attempting to capitalize on a different CPG trend at the time: cannabis. Founder (and “cream executive officer”) Sam Rose abandoned the CBD-infused ice cream idea in 2022 after determining that retailer enthusiasm and distributor buy-in was waning for food products using the non-psychoactive cannabinoid. Instead, Rose focused on scaling his business as an ultra-premium ice cream brand using the familiar pint format.

Interest in frozen novelties is on the rise, according to an exclusive Nosh report from SPINS. Rosebud Ice Cream’s new products are expected to ride that sweet success with four varieties (Original Vanilla, Classic Chocolate, Cookies ‘N Cream and a citrus marshmallow-flavored Blue Moon) sold for $4.99 per 0.8 oz pouch.

Nosh spoke with Rose about his journey to pouches, the challenges of getting his formulation correct and why he thinks his new portfolio extension will become a foothold for Rosebud’s place in the premium ice cream set.

The interview was lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

What was the impetus for developing a pouch-ready ice cream product?

The driving force has always been to make the best product so that it can become part of people’s favorite ice cream memories. What ultimately led to the pouches was just loving soft-serve ice cream. One of my core memories was going on a beach vacation and eating soft-serve there.

Back in September 2023, my nephew was about to have his first birthday. I was on FaceTime with my sister and I asked if I could send him ice cream. She said, “You should find a way to put it in these baby food pouches; he would go crazy for that.”

We kind of laughed it off, but the idea kept me up all night. I was thinking of all the possibilities of where we could sell it and what it would mean to have this differentiated product in the CPG space. I was a man possessed.

If you have been working on this for almost two years, I imagine there were challenges to getting it right. What were some of the hurdles you faced perfecting the innovation?

Once I started looking into what it would take to get ice cream into these pouches, I realized I could do it as a soft-serve recipe. Soft-serve has the right air content, butterfat and texture so that it could come out as it does from a [soft-serve] machine.

I spoke to our co-manufacturer, and they had all the necessary equipment to make a soft-serve mix and all that they needed was the pouch-filling device, which we had to go and shop around for.

Ultimately, that led me down this path of finding a machine manufacturer in a different country. The challenge was how we were going to buy this machine. I got turned down by probably 20 to 30 banks to take out an equipment loan. Finally in March [2024], we just decided to try to raise the money through friends and family. I wasn’t shy about going to every person in my life to see if they could help us raise the money. In May, we closed the round and bought the machine.

What advantage does this concept offer for Rosebud’s place in the ice cream category?

When I started [Rosebud] in 2020, we were boasting that we were the world’s first CBD-infused ice cream, and I really didn’t have a clue about what I was doing as far as starting a company. Everything that we’ve gotten to today has been a lesson learned the hard way.

Whatever the trends that ice cream is trying to ride – keto, dairy-free, low-sugar, high-protein – it always ends up in the same format: pints. The ice cream category is really saturated, and some of the largest companies in the world are operating in that space. So even if you do have a really innovative new thing, you put it in a pint and then you just end up competing against everyone else anyway.

The pouches are going to probably open doors at a faster rate because a lot of grocery already carries pints. We’ve always maintained that it’s not a matter of if but when we’ll get into those doors because we’ve done a really good job of making great ice cream. I think quality always wins.

Are there avenues that are opened up with the pouches in addition to grocery?

The pouches will help us scale faster than our pint business over the next few years. Partly because the utility and the function of the pouches allows them to be sold beyond where pints can. We don’t plan on abandoning grocery, but we just see the opportunity to sell beyond the traditional grocery channel.

No one’s going to go to a movie theater and buy a whole pint of ice cream to eat in their seat. You have a better shot of selling one of these soft-serves to a movie theater or at a baseball game or a concert venue. Other products exist in those spaces, but to have the ability to sell there as a small brand is what really enticed me.

With the understanding that you have acquired specialized equipment and developed a recipe unique to the innovation, is there a way to protect the brand from imitators?

We’re not the first people to put something in a pouch, and we’re not going to be the last people to put ice cream in a pouch. That’s fine. I think competition is good. There’s not really much to be patented here. There are people selling pouch products as it is. The advantage we have is being a small company and being able to operate and make nimble, quick decisions. If one of those big players wants to come into the market eventually, I think that’s probably a good sign for us. It means that they see validity to what we’re doing in the market, and that just means there is a lot of market share for us to try and take up.

Ultimately, we didn’t get into grocery stores by being the only ice cream pint offered. People tried us and bought us because of the product itself. What makes Rosebud special isn’t the fact that we have this soft-serve in a pouch. What makes Rosebud special is that we make America’s best ice cream.