Calvin Kayes and his team are not new to winning awards. But what really drives the business is the pursuit of the perfect flavours, using only the best ingredients, in a fun family setting.
Loop and Scoop is fresh from winning its latest honour as Scotland’s Best Dessert Parlour of the Year at the Scottish Cafe Awards last week.
The prize will join the already populated award wall at one of the company’s warehouses, in Kinning Park, which the Glasgow Times got to visit, in real Willy Wonka fashion.
Far from having an industrial feel, director and founder Calvin, 34, worked hard to instill a homely atmosphere into the place.
A giant wall picturing each one of his 54 employees under the banner “La Famiglia” - the family - is the first thing greeting visitors.
The rest of the warehouse reflects the branding of Loop and Scoop’s (soon to be) three shops, in Great Western Road, Bearsden and Victoria Road, with its signature orange and white ice-cream cart-like vibe.
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In fact, Calvin said, the branding is so well executed that many people mistake the shops as being part of a chain company.
“It’s just us, a team of passionate people, everything’s homemade and we work so hard in here, so we’re super proud of this award,” he said.
“Because now we have a few shops and quite good branding going on, people don’t realise that there’s only a small local business behind all this.”
Coming from a degree in marketing and working at the family event catering business in Glasgow, Calvin had the perfect formula for a successful venture.
But it wasn’t until he met his wife, whose family are the popular gelato makers Porrelli of Paisley, that the concept of an ice cream and churro shop came about.
The first Loop and Scoop opened in the West End in October 2017 and soon proved to be a hit with customers.
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“My wife was heavily pregnant and my daughter arrived in the January, it was just chaos,” said Calvin.
“For the first six months I literally had every meal in there, until I could afford a bit of a bigger team.”
The Bearsden shop followed suit in July last year, while works are in progress for a third shop in Govahill, which, it is hoped, will welcome the first customers in the winter if all goes to plan.
Calvin said: "It’s been really a whirlwind trip and I’m just like ‘how did this happen?’.
“I remember just thinking ‘does anybody want to come here and buy ice cream and churros?’.
“It’s really fortunate that everybody has embraced it and we’re really excited about coming to the Southside.
“Ever since we opened in Great Western Road, we’ve always been inundated on socials with requests from people and it’s finally happening.
“We’re so thankful for the support and we feel like we’re a part of Glasgow now.
“If you think pizza, you think Paesano, if you think ice cream, you think Loop and Scoop, and that means so much to me and the team.”
Despite the obvious success, the Loop and Scoop team never stop their search for new, improved flavours.
The business has snatched the secret of traditional gelato-making from Italy, where Calvin and his head of production, Violeta, take frequent trips.
But they have also got their quota of Italian gelato experts, like baker and ice cream-maker Mirella, from Milan.
They use only the best organic milk from a local farm and make all their toppings, including their own brownies, honeycomb, and even marshmallows.
Once the milk and cream are pasteurised, they are left to age in storage tanks before going through a gelato machine in the finishing kitchen.
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Here is where the magic happens and toppings are added to make the delicious flavours we all know, from seasalted caramel, to peanut brittle, and caramelised banana and biscuit with toffee sauce.
The last step is a quick shock in the blast freezer at -18C degrees - before taste testing, of course.
But it’s not easing making ice cream in Scotland. Brexit and Covid have been affecting their supply of ingredients, and the weather also plays its part.
Calvin said: “The weather makes such a difference for us. When the sun is shining, you just see the bigger orders going through the stores and it’s nice.
“We try to adapt but always try to keep the ice cream as fresh as possible.
“We make about 26 flavours and I want them to be the best ice cream we can make, I want our customers to be like ‘which one do I want?’.
“We try to come up with new flavours all the time, we speak to suppliers and we look at ideas, we’re just trying to take inspiration from life. If there’s something going on like Wimbledon or something, we think, ‘is there anything we can do to try and put a twist on something classic?’.
“We’re experimenting all the time, some are a hit, some are a mess. Right now, we’re working really hard on our vanilla so we’re about to move to a new organic Madagascar vanilla, which is really exciting.
“It’s taking us months to find the one that we want, we involve the whole team and I even bring my kids in.
“It’s a fun process, although not so good for the waistline, sampling ice cream all the time.”
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