The sister duo, founders of Mavens Creamery, from left: Gwen and Christine Nguyen. Their entrepreneurial story started in 2014 when they began making macaron ice cream sandwiches in their parents' home in San Jose, Calif.
It’s one of the richest, fattiest fruits and treated as a delicacy across Southeast Asia. It’s also known for its pungent reputation, which once led to the evacuation of an Australian university campus. It’s even banned from being carried on subways, aboard airplanes and in certain hotels overseas.
Durian, with its bright yellow meaty interior, is a fruit you either love or hate — and it’s coming to a Bay Area Costco near you in pint-sized ice cream form this October, dreamed up by the two sisters behind San Jose-based Mavens Creamery.
“Some things just can’t be explained,” said Christine Nguyen, co-owner of Mavens Creamery. “I get it. It’s off-putting. It’s a very strong smell. But, everyone in our family enjoys it.”
To certain people, Christine said durian may smell like leaking gas or rotten eggs. But for her family, durian was a fruit they grew up eating after dinner as a dessert, or whenever their mom would see the oblong, spiky fruit at the grocery store.
"Durian is definitely an acquire taste. We love to make rich, delicious ice-cream in flavors that are unique," says Gwen Nguyen, co-founder and CEO of Mavens Creamery.
Growing up in a Vietnamese family, Gwen Nguyen, who is Christine’s sister and the founder of Mavens Creamery, said durian was simply a part of their childhood growing up in the Bay Area, and it evokes positive food memories.
“There are just certain ingredients that are introduced being Vietnamese. Fish sauce, that’s in our DNA. So durian fruit, I just have always known for it to be a part of a dessert or a fruit after we would have a meal,” Gwen said. “It is a delicacy fruit, though, and it’s very rich, so you probably wouldn’t want to have it every day.”
A few years ago, Costco initially approached Mavens Creamery seeking its eye-catching and incredibly delicious macaron ice cream cookie sandwiches (more on those later), but as with many food-based businesses, the pandemic threw a wrench in those plans.
Individually packaged macaron sandwiches filled with flavored cheesecake and ice creams are the signature products of Mavens Creamery.
After the wholesale giant noticed a durian craze in its stores, where anything durian-related was flying off of shelves, Costco revisited the sisters and asked if they had a durian ice cream recipe. They did, but it was one that Christine, who’s the ice cream side of the family business, usually made for her mother. So she got to work perfecting that recipe for Costco, and now the emerald green and durian yellow ice cream pints are slated to hit 18 Bay Area locations starting in early October.
“I must say, that ice cream, because it's already blended with cream, sugar, milk, the taste is toned down. In terms of how strong it smells, how pungent, it’s maybe a five or six out of 10. But the fresh fruit when opened — that's 20,” Christine said. “We're very proud of this durian ice cream because if you look at the rest of the ingredients, it's very, very simple: milk, sugar, cream and durian.”
As far as how it tastes: the soft yellow-tinged ice cream had delightful savory moments of sauteed garlic and onions. As someone who had never tried durian before, I went in for my first spoonful while visiting Mavens Creamery headquarters in San Jose and let the funky aroma lead the way. Then, I went in for another scoop. Then, another just for good measure. Turns out, I’m a durian ice cream fan.
From left, Gwen and Christine Nguyen check the quality of freshly baked macarons, at the San Jose factory of Mavens Creamery, on Friday, Sept. 9, 2022. "Macarons have a very complex texture, we have worked very hard to perfect it and get the right consistency," says Gwen Nguyen.
“Some people think garlic. Some people think it’s the blue cheese of fruits,” Gwen said. “The Bay Area region is going to be the first region for this ice cream. And it only makes sense because this is our home. And it only makes sense because the demographic is here for this product. There are only specific regions that have that ethnic Asian community and durian lovers, durian fans because durian is not an acquired thing.”
Although Gwen and Christine look forward to the upcoming launch of their durian ice cream pints through Costco, the journey of Mavens Creamery began with its bite-sized macaron ice cream cookie sandwiches, which caught the eyes of Safeway, Whole Foods and “Shark Tank.” And it all started inside their parents' two-car garage.
If you’ve ever perused the bakery department at Safeway looking for a little sweet treat to enjoy after dinner, you may have stumbled upon one of Mavens Creamery’s standalone deep freezers. Adorned with the company logo, they’re usually filled to the brim with colorful macaron ice cream cookie sandwiches and also frozen macaron cheesecake varieties.
Freshly packaged macaron ice cream sandwiches are ready to be shipped. They are available at Safeway supermarkets in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The idea for Mavens Creamery started in 2014, when Gwen stumbled upon a mom-and-pop shop selling macaron ice cream sandwiches in Los Angeles. She loved them so much, in fact, that she asked if the couple were interested in franchising their store just so she could bring the frozen treats back to the Bay Area. They responded with a polite no, thank you.
So Gwen returned to the Bay Area, and with no formal baking experience, rolled up her sleeves and began teaching herself how to make macarons from scratch through YouTube tutorials and countless hours of repeating the precise recipe steps until the process was second nature down to the exact gram.
Once Gwen perfected her macaron recipe, she turned to her sister Christine and asked her if she’d like to try her hand at the ice cream side of the equation. Soon Christine began the same process of learning how to make their ideal batch of ice cream that would pair well with fresh-baked macarons.
“We bought a really small, countertop ice cream machine and that’s really how it all started. I learned from YouTube, and reading blogs and just trial and error,” Christine said. “Then, we upgraded from our home kitchen to our garage. So we are a garage story, and I’m very proud of our humble beginnings.”
Colorful macaron cookies are baked weekly at the San Jose factory of Mavens Creamery.
Colorful and delicious macarons cookies are baked weekly at the San Jose factory of Mavens Creamery.
Colorful and delicious macaron cookies are baked weekly at the San Jose factory of Mavens Creamery.
Colorful and delicious macaron cookies are baked weekly at the San Jose factory of Mavens Creamery.
After giving out samples of their frozen desserts to friends and family, who were immediate fans, a breakthrough happened. A friend of a friend was opening a dessert shop in Alameda and decided to give Mavens Creamery a shot by carrying 400 of its ice cream sandwiches. They sold out within hours.
“We took off right away. We were really successful in launching first in independent retail stores and pretty much sold out and couldn’t keep up,” Gwen said. “We were still in the garage, and Mom’s going to Costco to buy ingredients and Dad’s helping us crank out ice cream.”
Then, Safeway called. The West Coast-based grocery chain reached out to Mavens Creamery as one of the sales managers had randomly tasted a macaron ice cream sandwich, and enjoyed it so much, they began fulfilling orders in 2017. Whole Foods followed that same year, which is Mavens Creamery’s biggest client to date and has brought the handheld bites of joy all the way to the East Coast.
“Since 2015, when we first started, we struggled, and I mean struggled. It was very tough for us. We were working all day, all night and everything was made by hand,” Christine said. “We didn’t have the equipment that we have today to scale. So we were making roughly about, at our maximum, 500 ice cream sandwiches a week.”
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Today, during a typical week, Mavens Creamery’s San Jose facility churns out up to 30,000 individual ice cream sandwiches. They moved into the space in 2017, bought new equipment, hired more than a dozen employees who come in to fulfill orders for various grocery stores and independent retailers that many visit weekly.
“We had very humble beginnings. I remember our dad sat us down in one of the rooms and he just told us how proud of us he was and how far we had come,” Christine said. “To actually see with his own eyes and see what his own daughters could come up with and build. It was a happy moment for our family. Very emotional. But a very happy, proud moment.”
In 2019, Gwen and Christine appeared on the ABC reality television show “Shark Tank,” where the sisters sought more funding for expansion. On camera, it seemed as though Barbara Corcoran was all-in on giving Mavens Creamery a deal.
But in the end, it never surfaced. Still, the free publicity was priceless, Christine said.
Besides the upcoming durian pints, customers with a sweet tooth can choose from nine macaron ice cream flavors and six frozen cheesecake varieties from Mavens Creamery, found in more than 300 stores.
The smooth almond-flour-based cookies hug various recognizable flavors such as chocolate toasted almonds, cookies and cream and strawberry shortcake. The macaron cheesecake choices range from lemon cheesecake (my personal fave) to banana cream and snickerdoodle.
Individually packaged macaron sandwiches filled with flavored cheesecake and ice creams are the signature products of Mavens Creamery.
Whatever style you choose, each bite-sized delight packs real fruit, cookie pieces or nuts depending on the flavor, and the macarons, which come in lovely shades of blue, pink, purple or yellow, still have that satisfying macaron crunch.
“It’s definitely a challenging product to make. In the beginning, everything was made by hand. Oh man, those were some tough days,” Christine said. “We want our customers to not just enjoy the taste but appreciate our efforts that we put into it.”
“Our all-time, week after week, best-selling flavor is cookies and cream. It’s just everybody’s go-to, safe flavor. It is quite tasty,” Christine said. “I think the blue macarons attract customers’ attention. Some people have even told me that it reminds them of the Cookie Monster. It reminds them of their childhood to a certain extent. There’s nostalgia there.”
Christine’s love for ice cream is tied to sweet memories of when her mother would pick her up after school and treat her to a scoop of Thrifty-brand ice cream at their local Rite Aid in San Jose. With those memories kept as inspiration, research and development day is one of Christine’s favorite parts of the job.
“We don’t have like food scientists. We’re not Ben and Jerry’s yet. But we have a small R&D room in the back and that’s where I get to work,” she said. “For me, when it’s R&D day, I look forward to it so much. It’s so relaxing for me because I’m in my zone and I enjoy doing it and being creative.”
The sister duo, founders of Mavens Creamery, from left: Christine and Gwen Nguyen. Their entrepreneurial story started in 2014 when they began making macaron ice cream sandwiches in their parents' home in San Jose, Calif.
Christine carefully drafts multiple rounds of each ice cream recipe on paper before it even hits the ice cream room. But it’s that attention to detail, from the real pieces of strawberries tasted in the strawberry shortcake macaron to the thick lemony puck of frozen cheesecake, that produces big satisfying moments in such little desserts.
“I'm not making computer chips. I’m making ice cream. Who doesn't love ice cream?” Christine said. “Every time I hand a sample out to someone, or go make a sales pitch, I only see happy faces when I pass out ice cream.”
For Gwen, taking a step back and assessing the past eight years, she’s filled with proud moments, but she also said Mavens Creamery is just getting started. With a strong entrepreneurial spirit, she said they’re not here to be the vanillas in the world, although the two really love a good vanilla ice cream. Durian ice cream does make a statement, after all.
Colorful and delicious macaron cookies are baked weekly at the San Jose factory of Mavens Creamery.
Still, no matter where a Mavens ice cream sandwich ends up next, Gwen said she’ll never forget those times spent with family and friends in the garage pairing macarons with ice cream until 4 a.m.
“My funnest memories of Mavens will always be in the garage. No matter how big we get.”
Visit Mavens Creamery for more information on its macaron ice cream and frozen cheesecake cookie sandwiches and to learn when its durian pints launch at Costco.