By Joseph Eyre and Amber Fox-Eyre, Founders of Beau’s

Beau’s Gelato was born out of our shared passion for travel, discovery and – most importantly – great food. Prior to setting up Beau’s we travelled extensively, searching high and low for vegan dishes that were good enough to write home about.

Along the way, we were lucky enough to meet many incredible artisans doing amazing things with vegan ingredients. Inspired, we decided we would go back and craft our own contribution to the plant-based world: a fantastic vegan ice cream that everyone could indulge in and feel great about.

At the time that we made our decision, the vegan wave was still very much in its infancy. In stark contrast to all the exciting and interesting plant-based foods that we tasted on our travels, the scant options and bland fare that was available to us back in the UK left us cold. We could see that vegan food was being grossly undersold – and wanted to do something about it.

Taking the first steps

With backgrounds in nursing and finance, there was a huge learning curve for us to go through before we could make a product as good as those we’d sampled abroad. Keen to learn more, we reached out to the former owner of a highly successful vegan ice cream parlour which operated in New York, who helped us to refine our initial development and recipe research, as well as providing valuable commercial advice for starting out.

It was clear to us that we wanted our product to always be 100% vegan but, also, that it needed to be an authentic ice cream. We didn’t want our product to be a pale imitation of what was already out there; we knew that, if we wanted to convince people who didn’t usually eat vegan to try it, our ice cream would need to capture the smooth creaminess and deep, rich flavours that the very best dairy gelato offers.

In pursuit of the perfect product, we secured a personalised Vegan Gelato course at the Gelato University in Bologna, Italy. Here we worked one-on-one with an internationally acclaimed technician learning about the history of gelato, the best practices for ingredient composition, techniques to balance the mix, advanced flavouring methods and a general grounding on all matters concerning premises, production, machinery and equipment – including ways to develop products around certain allergens and intolerances.

From all of this emerged Beau’s Gelato: an authentic Italian-style ice cream made without any animal products. In keeping with the Italian heritage we learnt in Bologna, we created many of the classic household flavours that everyone knows and loves ­– from Vanilla, Strawberry and Chocolate to Mint Choc Chip, Stracciatella, Raspberry and Praline – all using vegan-friendly ingredients.

One of the great strengths of vegan cuisine, however, is the innovation and imagination that goes into many of the products that hit the market. We fully embrace and celebrate this, bringing to life bold, atypical flavours that have quickly become crowd-pleasers, such as Chocolate Orange, Pistachio and our one-off Pint Club flavours, such as Raspberry Ripple and Cinnamon Butter Pecan.

Vegan gelato isn’t just for vegans

With all of this, our ice cream carries a taste profile that will be familiar to both vegans, vegetarians, flexitarians and meat eaters alike.  While there is, happily, an abundance of vegan produce available across the UK now, much of it remains something that many non-vegans will consider to be ‘good… for vegan food’. Our ambition has been to remove that caveat, to go toe-to-toe with the mainstream providers and create something that everyone in the family – from the vegan kids to the flexitarian parents to the meat-eating grandparents ­– can enjoy equally. The evidence suggests that  we’re getting this right – we won three Great Taste Awards competing in the same category as mainstream dairy brands.

For those consumers who are vegans we – as a 100% vegan business – represent a lifestyle choice and the embodiment of a belief system in whose values we share. While there were lots of offers to create dairy products at the same time (particularly at the beginning of our journey), parking one foot in the vegan camp and one in the non-vegan camp wasn’t something we’d ever consider and, for us, it wouldn’t be doing right by the consumer or the planet. We are a vegan company run by vegans – and that’s the way we intend to remain.