Island Eats
Island Stories: COWS Ice Cream
Central Coastal Drive
What's In A Name?
What do you get when you mix vanilla ice cream, English toffee, chocolate flakes, and crunchy toffee pieces? A Wowie Cowie!
With a name as iconic as the irresistible scent of handmade waffle cones and punny bovine-themed pop culture tees, it hardly needs any introduction among Islanders and visitors alike.
For over 40 years, COWS has been serving up udderly delicious and unique ice cream flavours with names as memorable as their taste. From double scoops of Gooey Mooey to Messy Bessie and Moonicorn to Cownadian Maple, ever wonder how these fun flavours came to be?
At COWS, it’s the flavours that are dreamed up first and is a true collaboration within the team. Every year, the ice cream production manager sends out an email to all of the staff to see if anyone has any ideas for ice cream flavours they’d like to see in store. Ideas that were sent in through social media throughout the year are also collected. This process usually takes a few months. From there, they’ll create a shortlist from the suggestions. This year they were able to compile a list of about 15 different flavours!
This is when the real fun begins. After creating samples based on all the proposed flavours, the team gets together to try them all (where can we sign up?) and rates them from Strongly Like to Strongly Dislike. From there, the production manager is able to determine what the brand new flavours are going to be.
Fun fact! One flavour can have many different variations. Even a small ingredient can make a big difference in the way the ice cream tastes, and production manager would sometimes tailor a recipe by switching a particular ingredient from flakes, for example, to a swirl or chunks instead. In fact, one of the brand new flavours this year had about 4 different variations to it! Keep reading to find out which one it was.
After the new flavours have been finalized, the naming process begins! Much like any new COWS merch, the staff brainstorm ways to cow-ify the names of the new flavours being released.
COWS also loves getting input from their customers and tries to get them involved in any way they can. A few years ago, they asked the public to name their new flavour which was how Moonicorn (cotton candy ice cream with a blue frosting swirl and sprinkles) was born!
To make room for the release of new flavours, which COWS tries to do every year, some flavours are put out to pasture. How they decide which flavours to retire depend on the availability of the high-quality ingredients used and their popularity. But don’t worry! You can rest assured that the iconic Original COWS flavours like Wowie Cowie, will never go away. You can check out their current ice cream line-up and those that aren’t currently in rotation here.
Now, one other thing we should mention is that COWS has been getting a ton of requests for a dairy-free flavour, and the fantastic news is that one is currently in the works! Before they release it, it must have that premium taste that you’ve come to love with any COWS ice cream. But be patient, friends! They assure us that it will be worth the wait.