With the one-year anniversary of the creamery planned for late September, Myra Loveday, the director for the Rocky Top Institute and an assistant professor of practice, shared what’s been happening at the creamery and a glimpse of what’s to come.
The creamery is a joint effort between the Department of Food Science in the Herbert College of Agriculture and the Department of Retail Hospitality and Tourism in the College of Education Health and Human Science.
The third tier is Rocky Top Institute, a two-year fellowship where students created the business plan and marketing. In addition, they also named flavor profiles and looked at the retail business. Food science students create the ice cream and learn about commercialization, and students from all majors are hired to scoop and sell the ice cream.
The two colleges use this three prong approach to bring their product to the market through student experiential learning, meaning everything is 100% student-run, setting it apart from other university creameries across the country.
“The creamery has been very successful,” Loveday said. “They have new opportunities that weren’t in the original business model, trying to keep up with the demand of what consumers want, how they want it and where they want it.”
All the revenue goes back into the production and retail sides of the business because it is still a startup. Everything goes back to pay for supplies, labor, marketing, testing, and research and development.
Loveday shared that the creamery has created a bulk order request form to help provide ice cream to on-campus luncheons and events. The creamery is working with the Vol Dining’s new addition, Big Orange Grill, to supply them with UT Creamery ice cream to make milkshakes there. The creamery will also start selling milkshakes, but the shakes at the creamery will be custom, artisan milkshakes. A non-dairy option is also currently in development.
While they look at opportunities for expansion, one option undergoing a feasibility study is a food truck to help with a more mobile location both on and off campus.
The creamery is open on Saturdays from 12 p.m. – 7 p.m., so you can get ice cream on game days. Students can get free tasting of all the flavors. The creamery also has their signature free orange and white checkerboard sprinkles to top off your ice cream.
When the creamery opened there were five flavors: VOLnilla Bean, Torchbearer Chocolate, Go Big Orange, Smokey’s Strawberry Kisses and Mint Champion Chip. There was a seasonal pumpkin flavor last fall that they will bring back again this year, and they have added five more flavors: 1794 Birthday Cake, Midnight at Hodges Coffee, Good Ole Cookies and Cream, The Rock Rocky Road and the newest flavor: Dough Vols Dough — a cookie dough ice cream.
Loveday mentioned that the creamery has also partnered with UT Admissions so that every prospective student who is on an official tour gets a voucher for a free scoop in their swag bag.
Senior Grace Powell, an agriculture communications major, has been with the creamery since day one.
“It’s been an honor, to be honest,” Powell said. “It’s been very cool to be a part of something where I’m able to create something from a raw product to a finished product and to hear people say they enjoyed it.”
Powell revealed some of the processes it takes to create a new flavor, using peppermint as the example.
“For peppermint we went through at least 25 different samples,” Powell said. “Different types of peppermint, sizes of the candy peppermint and different types of chocolate used. Once they think they have something that is marketable it goes to the sensory lab in the food science building and they run a sensory panel on it.”
For a sensory panel they get 100 people consisting of community members, students, and faculty and staff to run a taste test. Sometimes they run a triangle test putting their creation up against two similar flavors already in the market.
Another test they run will take two or three different samples they have made and see which one consumers like best. They take whatever one got the best results, make several large batches, and bring it over to the creamery.
“It can take anywhere from one to six months to create a new flavor,” Powell said. “We’ve been working on our non-dairy for a while.”
Junior Kate Cattani, a retail and merchandising management major, is new to the program. She is excited to get hands-on experience in product development.
“I love the creative freedom it gives me,” Cattani said. “The Rocky Top Institute gives students hands-on experience. It’s almost like having an internship before moving on to the real world. I’m really interested in the creative aspect of it and learning here and being part of the retail and merchandising at the creamery is a huge step in my future.”
Cattani shared that her goal is to one day work for Disney doing product development. One of the classes she will take focuses on product development. Afterwards, in the Rocky Top Institute of Retail, students will work with manufacturers and pitch ideas to graphic designers.
Cattani and other students have the chance to work with two different brands, the UT Creamery and the Rocky Top brand.
According to Loveday, some of the bestsellers have been T-shirts in unusual colors. Pastels have been very popular. Putting the UT orange on a mint green or pink product — blankets, hats, T-shirts — it’s something unique and not already in the marketplace.
There’s a big emphasis on service and training. Powell shared that students are allowed to pitch ideas knowing that they might not work. Students need to take ownership of being able to have an idea and see it through and be ok with the fact that it didn’t work out.
“This is experiential learning. If it doesn’t work, we look at the results and see what needs to change,” Powell said. “It gives students a sense of accomplishment when they can look back and say, ‘Wow, we failed 18 times, but we got it on the 19th try.’”
Loveday said the students who work here at the creamery feel that they are a part of something bigger than themselves, something bigger than the university. They represent the state of Tennessee.
