Today we’d like to introduce you to Kristen Rummel.
Kristen, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I started making ice cream in my kitchen with a little Kitchenaid ice cream maker (the kind where you have to freeze the bowl). At the time, I was working in the kitchen at Union Square Donuts, a donut company with small beginnings, which inspired me to branch out on my own. Working out of a commercial shared kitchen, I signed up for some summer farmers markets and quickly realized that, I would need a space of my own, in order to grow and create a better product.
In 2015, we found a storefront. And in September of 2016, we opened our shop in Cambridge!
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I couldn’t say even now that we’re driving down a smooth road. There are still many long days and nights, equipment malfunctions and new problems that we’re learning to solve every day.
In the beginning, we mainly struggled working in a shared space and fitting into that space. The other issue that we had was transporting freezers and a frozen product to an event in the middle of summer. We learned to always be prepared (with dry ice) in case there was an electrical malfunction or our freezers just couldn’t handle the heat.
The final and ongoing struggle is finding a balance for life, work and all of the growing, changing aspects of work life. I feel like I was really rigid in how things should be done when I first started, but now everything is fair game. If an employee or friend suggests a different way to do something, then let’s try it out! We’re constantly learning and adapting.
Please tell us about Honeycomb Creamery.
I run a locally-sourced and entirely made from scratch ice cream company. We are the first in the Boston area to make our own ice cream – from liquid base to final product. We source local heavy cream and whole milk from Mapleline Farm in Hadley, MA and pasteurize each flavor separately in our shop. Our operation is very small as we just pasteurize 4 gallons at a time and churn 1 gallon at a time.
All of our mix-ins and toppings are homemade, even our chocolate sprinkles and sea salt. We do our best to source locally where we can or source from other small, local businesses. For the most part, this means that a lot of our flavors are seasonal. We work with a few local farms for the spring and summer months so that way, we can use the freshest ingredients. We also partner with local companies, like Taza Chocolate and Curio Spice.
I think I’m most proud of the close-knit atmosphere of our kitchen and retail staff. We all work hard to support each other in every new experience and are constantly working together to problem solve.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I had to start over, I may have tried to slow the process down and accepted that the slower process is okay. When we started to work on the space that was our shop, we were very focused on getting it set up for summer, which inevitably did not happen. There were a lot of bureaucratic hoops to jump through that we had no anticipated.
We’re now taking the time to go through the space and make smaller renovations when we have the time.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1702 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138
- Website: www.honeycombcreamery.com
- Phone: 617-714-3983
- Email: info@honeycombcreamery.com
- Instagram: /honeycombcreamery
- Facebook: /honeycombcreamery
- Twitter: /hccreamery
Image Credit:
Kristen Rummel
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Eileen Lynn
April 1, 2018 at 5:10 am
So happy that you are doing so well!!