WHEN Larry Gardener decided to go into early retirement and returned to Jamaica eight years ago, little did he know he would be building a brand that would be growing nationally, while being on the verge of breaking into the international market. The company we are talking about is called Baby Love CG Foods Limited, but it’s a company name which you may have never heard before. However, chances are, you may have come across or heard about its product, Vineyard Town Premium Blend handcrafted non-dairy ice cream.

But what’s the story behind this company and in particular its name?

Gardener explained: “As for ‘Baby Love‘, my mother couldn’t pronounce my wife’s first name which is Antanya. She would sometimes pronounce it as Antenna or Antaneea, and I had to keep telling her that my wife’s name is Antanya, and she just gave up and started calling her Baby Love. After a while I told myself that I will open a business and call it Baby Love.” CG in the company’s name comes from his wife’s maiden and married name, Chung Gardener.

The brand name chosen for the ice cream, he points out, was taken from Vineyard Town in St Andrew, where he spent his teenage years before migrating to the United States where he worked for 40 years. Gardener spent his earlier years in England where he was born and ahead of returning to Jamaica permanently, he said he lived in Belize for three years where he operated a vegan restaurant.

Despite the brand name though, Vineyard Town Premium Brand ice cream is not made in St Andrew, but in Tower Isle, St Mary. While its packaged products in several flavours are found in supermarkets, most of the products are distributed through the entity’s sole retail location in the vicinity of the factory in Pompano Complex in Tower Isle, St Mary.

“We are only here in St Mary right now,” Gardener told the Jamaica Observer recently. He said the company is now undergoing a $40-million expansion to establish a bigger factory with an outlet store in Ocho Rios and another store in Drax Hall, both in neighbouring St Ann parish in May and June this year.

The stores are called Baby Love’s Twist “and all stores we open in the future will have that name,” Gardener said. Having already established why Baby Love is part of the company’s name, he said twist was chosen as part of the store’s name “because there is a twist to [the ice cream] and the twist is that it is non-dairy”.

Gardener said when he decided to return to Jamaica, “I thought I was taking early retirement to come and run a small business to make a little bit of money, so I could kick back and relax. But I have never worked so hard in my life,” he said laughing. “It’s been good. It’s been good. Growth wise, it is just more than I anticipated.”

In fact, Gardener said while he decided to sell ice cream when he returned to Jamaica because it “seemed popular here”, he was uncertain how his product would be accepted given that it was non-dairy.

“I just tried and here I am five years later,” he said.

“It’s been awesome. Much better than I expected. As a matter of fact, when COVID hit in 2020, we were just on that growth spurt, and I thought the pandemic would result in the death of the company, but instead we grew exponentially during COVID,” he told the Business Observer. Since inception, the company has grown between 50 per cent and 60 per cent each year.

“When we started in 2018, everything was made here in the back,” he said in reference to the small store at Tower Isle. “Then we outgrew the space and took a 1,500 square foot space on the other side of the plaza and we outgrew that in the first year.” That space is now used to collect prepare fruits and pastries which are also sold in the store.

“Then in 2019, we were approached by the store manager from the General Foods store in Ocho Rios and she suggested that while she didn’t think the products would do well at her store, it would be a good fit for the General Foods store in Liguanea. So we started distributing with [General Foods Liguanea] in October 2019, and right now we have gotten products into 60 supermarkets and we can’t service all of their demand,” he added.

“We are fulfilling ice cream orders from only about 15 of the stores and that is why we are doing the expansion and hope that by this summer we will improve that,” he said.

With the expansion, the company will quadruple output. Now its ice creams sell in HiLo, Progressive, MegaMart, Lees Food, Family Pride and is scheduled to be in PriceSmart as of this summer. At the same time, he said the company is just getting products into St Elizabeth and Portland as it expands its customer base away from Kingston, Portmore, Spanish Town, Mandeville, and Montego Bay.

Gardener, who operates the business with his wife and 14 employees, said the company produces 73 flavours of ice cream.

“We break it down into what we called the classics. That is your vanilla, rum and raisin, grapenut and strawberry, etc. Then we have our fruit flavours which would be like jackfruit, guava passion, naseberry and June plum, and then we have what we call our exotics which are like spurlina, hemp and a charcoal ice cream. So they are kinda broken up into different categories, and then we have pairings. So we have guava and we have passion and we also have guava-passion, we have jackberry which is strawberry and jackfruit, so it is broken up into different classifications.”

However, not all 73 flavours are produced at the same time. At Tower Isle, only 32 flavours are always available. When the Drax Hall store opens, it too will distribute 32 flavours, while the factory outlet store at Ocho Rios will have 60 flavours at any one time. Only 15 flavours are available in supermarkets.

But as the company expands, Gardener said he hopes to start exporting as soon as next year.

“We are now going through a GMP (good manufacturing practices) certification for Europe and we are going through HACCP (hazard analysis and critical control points) certification for the US market,” he told Corporate Profile.

Gardener said he would love to expand his Baby Love Twist stores to Kingston and Montego Bay, but will have to pause now with two new stores to come on stream this summer.

“Folks have been asking about franchising, but I am not keen on the idea. When you do a franchise, there are specific rules and guidelines and regulations that you follow,” he said with a pause before adding, “We close on Saturdays and for most people, that’s a problem,” said Gardener. He acknowledged being Seventh-day Adventist as he added, “Their concern is that Saturday is a really big ice cream day and I am saying, ‘Yes it is. But it is going to be a problem for us.’ I don’t want to tie anybody’s hands to what we do.”

Instead, he encouraged those interested in distributing his products in an ice cream shop to set up their own entity and purchase the product for distribution instead of facing restrictions under a franchise.

The company also operates what is called a ‘farm to spoon’ programme through which it sources all the fruits that go into each flavour of ice cream from local vendors and farmers. Excess fruits are vacuum sealed to prevent it from spoiling for up to 18 months without preservatives. Gardener said he is also committed to ensure that as the company grows, its ice cream remains artisanal with humans hand-mixing flavours.

“Every single batch is unique to itself,” he pointed out.

Five years into business with the company ready to expand from one location to three, Gardener said it has started to turn a profit.

“It has been interesting. It is still a young company. As much as we make, we put back into the company. We are just getting to the point where our profits are starting to look like someone’s child. Gone are the days when I have to subsidise the business. It now pays for itself. She is growing up,” he said with a hearty laugh.