Cadwalader’s Ice Cream, Stoke on Trent

Having spent 20 years bringing Cadwalader’s Ice Cream from a single retail shop to a chain of 10, busy, ice cream parlours, Richard Gloucester has realised a long term ambition and commissioned RSS Hereford to design and shopfit his latest ventures.

Richard’s business prowess has resulted in a healthy and steady growth for the company, allowing it to provide what the vastly increased customer base demands, but never deviating from the inherent quality of the family recipe, artisan ice cream first developed by the Cadwalader family in the 1920s.

“Artisan ice cream is delicious,” proclaims Richard. “I have never wanted to change from that, but I realised I could streamline the production process more, so, with help and advice from RSS over the years, I centralised production, allowing me to open further outlets and develop the Cadwalader profile.”

Cadwalader’s produces 40 flavours of ice cream but, intentionally, rarely offers more than 6 or 7 on a rolling basis. “My aim has always been to keep prices low – a cornet retails for just over £1.00 – so I needed to reduce the choice to simplify (and speed up) customers’ decisions, encouraging a greater throughput.”

This decision has worked well and during the holiday season, Cadwalader’s 100 staff are kept busy keeping production levels up and customers served. Other items on the menu include a range of milk shakes, smoothies, a recent addition, thinnies (fat free shakes made with a fruit ice base) and a range of sticky buns and gateaux.

Curiously, the customer base varies from outlet to outlet. “We tried renaming some of our flavours according to customer demographics,” explains Richard. “For instance, where Rum & Raisin sales were low, by re-christening it Malaya, sales increased dramatically and, similarly Tutti Frutti became Cassata.”

However, one thing all customers have in common is the desire to be in a ‘special’ environment. “Of course I have commissioned shopfitters before,” says Richard. “But I believe we’ve reached the stage now where we can justify the ultimate. Because RSS has such a deep, fundamental understanding of artisan ice cream as well as having the resourses to design and fit the highest quality displays, nothing has been overlooked and everything works like a dream. Customers have responded very well to the new environment and staff are able to be more efficient resulting in a faster turnaround and more sales.”