Carmen’s Best Founder on What Makes a Great Ice Cream

“[Before establishing Carmen’s Best,] I knew nothing about ice cream aside from enjoying eating it,” Francisco “Paco” Magsaysay admits with a laugh to this writer at the launch of his book, Beyond the Scoop: The Carmen’s Best Story. 

His father, former Senator Ramon “Jun” Magsaysay Jr., owned a dairy farm, and Magsaysay was “mandated” to find a way to utilize the farm’s surplus fresh milk before it spoiled. “I decided to look at making it into something that would last longer and add some value to the product, and thought of making ice cream,” he recalls. 

His father’s farm hired a food technologist from the Dairy Research Training Institute (DTRI) at UP Los Baños, and he remembers being asked, “What type of ice cream do you want to make?” 

The young Magsaysay, replied, unknowingly, “What do you mean, what type of ice cream?” That was when he learned that the higher the butterfat content, the more premium the ice cream, while one with lower butterfat content is considered less premium. He then told the food technologist, “Siyempre, yung pinakamasarap ang gusto ko.” 

He remembers tasting the first batch of ice cream he made, comparing it from what he was used to getting in the US, where he spent his high school and college years. “I said, ‘My gosh, this is amazing. This is the only thing we're going to make. We'll concentrate on ice cream. We won’t make other dairy products. Basta ice cream lang tayo.’ So that's the journey on how we targeted the premium ice cream market.” 

Magsaysay also didn’t play safe when it came to flavors. He could have gone the familiar route with strawberry, vanilla, chocolate, ube, macapuno, or keso. Instead, he decided to see how far he could push ice cream. Their first four flavors were salted caramel, butter pecan, Brazilian coffee, and malted milk. “People were intrigued with the flavors. At sa awa ng Diyos, nag-click naman siya. Kasi up to now, those four flavors are in our top five selling flavors,” he says.  

Those early decisions helped shape what Carmen’s Best would become, but for Magsaysay, great ice cream goes beyond premium ingredients and unexpected flavors. We asked him what, after all these years, makes a truly great scoop. 

Well, they think it’s a flavor issue. Maybe they don’t understand that it’s the butterfat that contributes to the quality of the product. It’s the same thing with steak. When you have a steak that’s very well-marbled, it will taste a lot better than a lean steak with less fat. So when you have an ice cream product with a higher fat content, mas masarap siya, ’di ba?

Well, it’s not really difficult to work with, but fresh vanilla beans are difficult to source. They’re traded like a drug. They’re very expensive and not regulated at all. So getting them consistently at a certain price is quite challenging. It’s hard to use fresh vanilla beans for a high-volume product. 

Achieving the same level of sweetness can be tricky when you work with fresh fruits. Mangoes, for instance, aren’t going to be as sweet when they’re out of season. ’Pag in season ang mangga, matamis siya. The same goes for fresh avocado and other fruits. It’s hard to maintain consistency kasi nag-iiba-iba yung level of sweetness. That’s why sometimes it’s better to use a paste or something standardized, para pareho ang lasa.

Well, I think initially, we were making our ice cream without a lot of inclusions. By inclusions, I mean nuts, fudge, and different solids that you put in the ice cream. Kasi in other countries, when you have a very high-fat ice cream, you want to taste how creamy it is. You don’t want to taste all the solids. But I noticed that Pinoys like inclusions in their ice cream. Take our pistachio, for example. When we first launched it, I purposely didn’t put pistachio nuts in it because I wanted people to experience how creamy our ice cream was. But later on, I realized sales would be better if we added the nuts, so I did. I didn’t even increase the price. 

Pistachio. 

Well, I like Carmen’s Best Dark Chocolate, and of course, the Pistachio. I also like the Brown Butter Almond Brittle. And I really miss the Cereal Milk flavor. 

I guess it taught me a lot about how I am as a leader. Prior to that, I had been running the family business for a long time. Of course, it wasn’t a business that I started, so I would defer to my father because he was the one who started it. 

But when I was running Carmen’s Best, it was all on me. I was the captain of the ship. And I loved how we grew, how we treated our staff, our suppliers, and our clients. There was a certain way that we did things. I’m not saying we didn’t do that with the other business, but we were just more connected with the people we dealt with at Carmen’s Best. 

Actually, I wasn’t planning to write a book. But [my executive coach] Anda del Rosario and I would share stories, and she would always say, “You should come up with a book. You should tell that story because people will enjoy hearing it.” This went on for about three years. 

We initially met with a publisher, but I realized there were so many constraints. So sabi ko, “Mag-self-publish na lang.” It turned out to be more expensive because I had to find my own editor, art director, and all that, but I think it’s what I wanted the book to be. Like Carmen’s Best, I did it the way I wanted it, without being boxed in by a publisher’s rules. 

It’s really about how we grew the business and everything we went through along the way. A lot of people ask me, “How did you do it?” or “What was your mindset?” So those stories are all covered in the book. It has 34 chapters, written like Chicken Soup for the Soul, so each chapter stands on its own.  

Beyond the Scoop will be available at Fully Booked outlets nationwide starting October, and soon on Amazon, Lazada, and Shopee. 

ALSO READ:

Today I Learned: Two Books of Food Writing Legend Doreen Fernandez Are Making a Comeback

Book on Samar’s Cuisine Wins World Cookbook Awards

No Medium Keeps Its Own Memory: On the Finalists for Best Book on Media Studies at the 43rd National Book Awards