Scoop the Magic
Photography by Dan Kuras
Every pint of Scoop the Magic ice cream contains wholesome ingredients and is made with pure joy, straight from the heart of a woman with passion and vision. When Uli Billington immigrated to the Central Coast from Germany in 2014, she never thought she’d own a plant-based ice cream business, let alone a brick-and-mortar shop. And yet it all magically, as she tells it, fell into her lap.
The ingredients listed on the back of a commercial pint of vegan ice cream tend to be highly processed, contain considerable amounts of sugar and are full of artificial fillers and flavors. After Uli noticed this, she took it upon herself to make consciously clean products. She’s very intentional about the ingredients she puts in her products. Hard evidence also supported Uli’s foresight. Health professionals estimate nearly half of all Americans are lactose intolerant to some extent. And the number of people following a dairy-free diet for moral or personal reasons is on the rise, too.
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Long before she’d ever dress in a lab coat, goggles and a mask to mix plant-based ingredients in an ice cream manufacturing facility, Uli lived in Resmeck, Germany. She was raised by two entrepreneurial parents who imparted their wisdom to her. In 2014, when Uli was working in sales and marketing, she moved to San Luis Obispo and two years later, gave birth to her daughter. Having a child led Uli to leave the corporate world and begin working as a consultant at the Women’s Business Center in San Luis Obispo. While helping women start and run small businesses, she encountered two ladies looking to sell their non-dairy ice cream business called Kari & Sherri’s.
“Something inside of me sparked,” she says about her decision to buy the business. “I feel that ice cream is a happy product.” The bliss shown on customers’ faces, along with the personal gratification of creating guilt-free ice cream, has pushed Uli to jump through the necessary hoops to evolve her business.
Over time, Uli had to learn everything related to the business, from properly blending ingredients to selling at local farmers’ markets and passing state inspections. Despite Scoop the Magic’s products being dairy free, the business must abide by the rigorous dairy regulations of the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA). “Ice cream production is not easy,” says Uli. “It is not just something I can do from home. I have to have a special [dairy] production facility.”
Scoop the Magic’s vegan ice cream is made from a base of either cashews, walnuts or peanuts, depending on the flavor. The base is organic when possible and pure agave or maple syrup is used as a sweetener. There are absolutely no artificial flavors. Chocolate, raspberry and golden milk are a few of the local flavor favorites, but the true crowd pleaser is mint chip. However, the reigning flavor champion could change once Uli releases some upcoming, more adventurous flavors: lemon charcoal, pina colada and chocolate sea salt.
Scoop the Magic hit farmers’ markets of San Luis Obispo County in 2019 and took off from there. Many vegans and those who are lactose intolerant continually express gratitude that they can finally eat ice cream that actually tastes good. For people who do eat dairy ice cream, Scoop the Magic’s flavor and consistency land on their taste buds just as pleasantly. Marketgoers started asking Uli where else they could find her product since it often melted by the time they were done shopping the outdoor market. The surge in demand inspired Uli to sell her product through other small businesses, like Ziggy’s in San Luis Obispo and farm-to-doorstep delivery service Harvestly, and to expand into grocery stores across the country.
Unsure of how it would go, she reached out to grocery owners and eventually got her ice cream stocked in 10 stores that focus on organic, local products. Gather Natural Market in Atascadero, Soto’s True Earth Market in Cambria, Paso Health Food Store and California Fresh Market in Pismo Beach are a few of them. She knew she had something great going after stores began selling out of her pints just three days after they hit the freezers. Uli realized she would have to expand production, which she did.
Now, along with selling at grocery stores and farmers’ markets, Scoop the Magic has a physical scoop shop near downtown Paso Robles. With a grab-and-go gelato counter and a freezer stocked with pints, customers may take a scoop or two to enjoy outside at the park. The shop isn’t just where the scooping happens, though; it’s also where the magic — the manufacturing — takes place.
In the end, Scoop the Magic offers customers a tasty alternative to a treat many people cannot eat these days — a delicious scoop of milk-free magic.
