Yoji and the Foodies

Nestle’s ad says it all.

Not even a bad bad cold and a lung-crushing coughing fit can stop me from eating ice cream. We still have half a gallon of vanilla ice cream in the fridge. It’s leftover from day after Christmas when all the kids came devouring it with Smuckers Magic Shell caramel topping. I could have eaten the leftover without remorse, but I’ve already eaten the diabetes-inducing Swiss cake from Becky’s Kitchen. So, I waited a few more days. Of course, those days were food trip sessions with the family. While stuffing myself with Chinese food, I was already thinking of the vanilla ice cream at home. The trip home is 45 minutes. I could not wait that long. So we decided to go to Fruits in Ice Cream Summer Cafe over at the Alabang Town Center.

Let’s call the ice cream FIC. They are the ice cream people who used to work in Magnolia (or so I was told) and have since established an ice cream brand of their own. I can only imagine how tough it is to compete with Selecta or Nestle because, let’s face it, product differentiation in ice cream is about 90% marketing gimmick. It’s ice cream; how much differentiation do you need to set it apart from the competition? Not much, I say. You can just say “my ice cream brings all the boys in the yard, and they’re like, it’s better than yours, damn right, it’s better than yours. I can teach you but I have to charge…lalalala”  – There’s your product differentiation.

Given my skepticism over ice cream differentiation, I have to admit that FIC made the ice cream competition a little more interesting by introducing flavors that were not widely available (e.g. Durian, Black Sesame) and flavors that Filipinos can truly appreciate (e.g. Kape’t Gatas, Nangkasuy, Tsokonut). These are  not hard to do at home, but who has the time? Really.

FIC has so many flavors so the key is to stick to your first choice and stop oggling the other flavors.  There will be enough days in 2010 to try out every flavor  combination. The Godfather and the Shoppinger played it safe and ordered Mango and Avocado. I say, Avocado owns Mango! No competition. The Godfather does not agree.

I was keen on getting the Durian, but Shoppinger gave that “You’ll regret it later” look. So, I finally decided on the Caramel Pastillas (the exact name escapes me at the moment — memory fail moment). It was the best ice cream decision at that time. But I really am preparing myself for the Durian – maybe next year.

At 50 pesos per scoop (60 for the sugar-free), it is under the “affordable” ice cream pricing level. For comparison, Sebastian ice cream is 80 pesos; Haagen Daaz is 130 pesos, DippinDots is 50 pesos, Manong sorbetero’s “dirty” ice cream is 10 pesos.

I would recommend FIC if ordinary ice cream just doesn’t hit the spot anymore. It’s the best cure for ice cream-fatigue syndrome.