Staci Fritz
l-r: Aviation (gin, maraschino liqueur, creme de violette, fresh lemon); Sweet Corn & Basil; Fresh Tomato.
Staci Fritz knows ice cream shouldn’t be overly sweet or dusted with candy sprinkles to attract interest. Fritz’s unique approach to flavors, in fact, makes her Calliope Ice Cream a scoop above the competition.
Long-time fans of the brand, which originated in 2011 in the basement of The Weary Traveler Freehouse bar and restaurant, have already ingested their share of flavors like Brandy Old Fashioned, Mexican Hot Chocolate and Hearty Breakfast (based on a blend of French toast, bacon and whiskey). The seven Calliope varieties have been sold by the pint in Madison-area grocery stores and five Chocolate Shoppe locations, and by the scoop for dessert at The Old Fashioned, The Lone Girl and Pasqual’s.
Now Calliope has opened its first “scoop shop” at the new Ian’s Pizza in the Garver Feed Mill. What’s more, the new digs have allowed Fritz (who also works full time as an account manager at Ian’s) to indulge her inner mad scientist by whipping up a rotating roster of four new, even more experimental flavors, available only at the shop.
Recent treats like sweet corn and basil, tomato, and fresh peach have yielded to this week’s kringle flavor (made with Kringle Cream liqueur and pieces of the breakfast pastry); a coffee flavor made with State Line Distillery coffee liqueur and Ledger Coffee espresso grounds; a maple flavor with cayenne-spiced pecans; and pumpkin pie (complete with bits of crust and whipped cream).
For the Garver grand opening, Fritz is working on three flavors: a red beet ice cream with sugared cubes of golden beets; a goat cheese with sugared lemon; and a green goddess-inspired ice cream with such herbs as tarragon, flat-leaf parsley, basil and chives. “Once you start thinking about flavors, they can work well in ice cream — if you have a little bit of an open mind.”
Calliope, owned by Fritz and Ian’s co-owner Nick Martin, contracts with The Chocolate Shoppe, which has a licensed dairy processing facility, to produce its seven standard flavors, usually in 180-gallon lots. However, Fritz produces the Garver varieties on-site and by hand in very small lots of one to four gallons at a time. Flavors are determined by the seasons as much as by Fritz’s own whimsy.
“The tomato ice cream developed because my father, who is 85, had grown a bumper crop of tomatoes this year and there’s only so many tomato-based dishes I can feed my kids,” Fritz says. “The ice cream is 14 percent milk fat, so it was a little hard for the tomato flavor to break through. I added the seeds and skin to strengthen the flavor and give the ice cream some texture, as well as a little salt and vanilla. The result was a subtle fruity flavor with a slight tomato aftertaste.”
Fritz, whose first food industry job was delivering pizza in her native Bettendorf, Iowa, relocated with her ex-husband to Madison in 2006 from Oakland, California, where she held “a wide variety of non-glamorous office positions,” and did some marketing and copywriting. She joined Ian’s staff as office manager and administrative do-it-all, and has been affiliated with the company ever since.
Her ice cream education has largely been learning by doing, but she did attend a “batch freezer three-day intensive” session on making ice cream at the UW-Madison Department of Food Science. She also attended Scoop School, a frozen dessert education and training facility in St. Louis, Missouri. The session was led by Steve Christensen, who now serves as the National Ice Cream Retailers Association’s executive director.
Despite its growing presence in Madison, Calliope is still in its nascent stages as an independent business, Fritz says. Sales have grown from about $15,000 annually in 2015 to slightly less than $30,000 in 2018, thanks in part to the grocery store demos Fritz conducts on a regular basis. Other than some limited help she gets from Ian’s marketing person, Fritz is Calliope’s only employee, and a part-time one at that.
Experimenting with ice cream is a passion for Fritz, but she credits Jason Borgmann — the former Weary Traveler cook who started Calliope in 2011 and left in 2015 — with lighting the spark.
“The whole thing started with Jason, and our regular line of flavors are all his recipes,” Fritz says. “Jason was the real ice cream artist.”
