The art of making good ice cream without added sugar

Hemglass have a new mixed pack of sug­ar reduced ice creams. The ice creams are well-known clas­sics and the cus­tomers have found the taste to be unusu­al­ly good – and Hemglass always lis­ten to their cus­tomers. Previous no-added-sug­ar prod­ucts caused a decline in sales. Now they sell to bud­get, accord­ing to Anders Granath, senior busi­ness devel­op­er at Hemglass.

Home deliv­er­ies is the spir­it of the age and the branch is grow­ing expo­nen­tial­ly. An old sil­ver back in this field is Hemglass, who cel­e­brat­ed 50 years in exis­tence last year.

– We are now more than ever in the right place at the right time, says Anders Granath.

On the wish list: Sugar reduced ice cream

Hemglass’ busi­ness idea is to sell ice cream direct­ly to Swedish homes with a range to suit all ages and pref­er­ences. Some ice creams should also be suit­able for those who are aller­gic to or intol­er­ant of var­i­ous foods. In this range sug­ar reduced ice creams are included.

Over the years Hemglass has tried to offer pack­ages with a mix of ice creams with­out added sug­ar. When the last pack­age did­n’t do well it was tak­en off the market.

– But after a while our fran­chis­ers brought to our atten­tion that cus­tomers were still ask­ing for such a pack­age. And four years ago it became my task to find a replace­ment, says Anders Granath.

Surprisingly good taste

Hemglass applies pri­vate label - let­ting oth­ers pro­duce the ice cream accord­ing to their recipes. One ice cream mak­er was tasked with devel­op­ing new sug­ar reduced prod­ucts. And soon sam­ples of sug­ar reduced ice cream were pre­sent­ed to Hemglass.

– We were won over in an instant. The taste was real­ly good. It did­n’t feel arti­fi­cial and did­n’t have any off-taste, which I find arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers can have. Everybody in our prod­uct group were sur­prised at the good taste, says Anders Granath.

The art of mak­ing ice cream with­out added sug­ar to taste good is all about the sug­ar replac­er. Behind the taste, aro­ma and mouth feel of the new ice creams is Bayn’s sug­ar replac­er Eureba D-01. The sweet­en­ing comes from ingre­di­ents from nat­ur­al sources, and the solu­tion allows ice cream and food man­u­fac­tur­ers to exchange the sug­ar 1:1. Earlier stud­ies also show that the solu­tion gives a crys­talli­sa­tion very sim­i­lar to that of ice cream sweet­ened with sugar.

Positive response

In February in 2019 the new pack­age was launched. it con­tains Jordgubbsstrut (straw­ber­ry ice cream cone), Päronsplit (vanil­la ice cream with pear ice cov­er), Vaniljbägare, a cup of vanil­la ice cream with choco­late rip­ple and Chokladvaniljpinne (choco­late cov­ered vanil­la ice cream). Classic ice creams for the whole fam­i­ly, but now with Eureba as the sug­ar reducer.

The response from cus­tomers is pos­i­tive, says Anders Granath, and the sales fig­ures are com­plete­ly in line with budget.

– This is a niched prod­uct but an impor­tant part of our range. If Hemglass can’t offer ice creams with­out added sug­ar the risk is great that the cus­tomers won’t buy any ice cream from us at all. Choosing instead to buy in a shop, says Anders Granath.

Meeting the customers’ needs

Hemglass is cur­rent­ly inves­ti­gat­ing how the new­ly launched sug­ar reduced ice creams are doing in sense of cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion. Pricewise they are com­pa­ra­ble to the rest of the range. If the demand for sug­ar reduced ice creams increas­es, it is pos­si­ble that Hemglass will increase the range.

– I am think­ing a com­plete­ly new dairy ice cream with­out added sug­ar, or remak­ing an exist­ing ice cream from our own range. No deci­sions have been tak­en, but if the cus­tomers demand it, it will be so, says Anders Granath.

A healthier choice

The Swedes do love their ice cream. In Europe Swedes claim sec­ond place in eat­ing the most ice cream. Twelve litres of ice cream per per­son and year is gulped down, accord­ing the asso­ci­a­tion for Swedish ice cream mak­ers. Only our neigh­bours in Finland eat more.

At the same time more and more con­sumers are health conscious.

Hemglass, with Anders Granath lead­ing the way, are keep­ing their eyes on cur­rent trends. The trend to eat healthy is hold­ing strong.

– We see pro­tein ice creams and oth­er ice creams with ingre­di­ents that sig­nal healthy eat­ing. But if it’s a pass­ing trend or if it will remain so is more dif­fi­cult to tell. Our mot­to is to eat well but in mod­er­a­tion. That means you can enjoy a real­ly nice dairy ice cream once in a while too, he says.