How Northern Bloc sought to create genuinely delicious vegan ice cream

As I write the phrase “I don’t normally eat ice cream”, I can hear the words of some old blues singer going around my head: “’Course, I don’t drink – not unless I’m on my own or I’m with somebody.” Maybe everybody has to eat ice cream sometimes. Because it’s there. And I found myself particularly drawn towards the Northern Bloc carton in the ice cream section at Waitrose for two reasons: the word “vegan”, and those other vital words, “white choc and honeycomb”. So naturally I had to do some serious product-testing – and have a word with Northern Bloc’s two co-founders, Dirk Mischendahl and Josh Lee.

Dirk stresses that the first criterion of ice cream is that it has to be delicious. “It’s got to be as good as if it was being served in a Michelin-starred restaurant. The vegan community had low expectations. They were willing to accept eating cardboard. We felt it was unacceptable.”

Josh, the younger of the two, is equally concerned with the sustainability side. “Everyone started off using soya, but it’s terrible for the environment. We started off with a rice base, but it’s heavy on water usage. So we switched to pea with oats. The carbon imprint is a lot less and it’s all grown in the UK.” And they use a fully biodegradable pot.

“But,” adds Dirk, “I’m not going to bullshit anyone. We do use sugar too. Ice cream is an indulgence. You don’t want to be shortchanged. We’re not trying to be eco-warriors. It’s sustainable but it’s still ice cream.”

The two men met many moons ago when Dirk went to work on Josh’s parents’ farm in Bedfordshire. He grew up in Australia but aged 20 he was drawn to England by Josh’s aunt – who then dumped him. When Josh moved north to Leeds 18 years later, their paths crossed again. Initially they worked together in marketing, but they were keen foodies, and one fine day in 2013 Dirk went out and bought a “Sunshine Scoops” ice cream van. Having built his business up over many years, he decided he’d had enough of marketing. “It wasn’t for me,” he says simply.

Josh, then 25, jumped in the van too. It wasn’t long before the pair of them cooked up the plan to dedicate themselves to the vegan market. They based themselves in a kitchen on the canal, next to an old mill, opposite the local sex shop, in the shadow of a prison. “We were seeing a revolution in coffee and beer,” says Dirk, “but ice cream was lagging behind.”

It started promisingly enough, making small batches for local customers, using only good, fresh, local ingredients bought at Leeds market. But out of success came complications. “We were so naive,” says Josh. “It was a crash course in why more people weren’t doing this. It’s ok on the first day – the problem is trying to make it stable with natural ingredients.”

A lot of people cheat using syrups. Josh and Dirk didn’t. But soon they were getting urgent SOS messages from restaurants who were trying to store the ice cream for a week or more. “Help! Your ice cream just fell apart!” Then an Italian named Manolo Imperatori had his first taste of Northern Bloc.

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Manolo wasn’t just any ice cream enthusiast: he was a fourth-generation ice cream maestro and a world champion. Every year ice cream makers come from all over the world to compete at the world championships in Bologna and present new flavours to the world. Manolo, who happened to have a sister in Harrogate, joined forces with Northern Bloc. For the first year they had to communicate via a translator app. But he set up his own lab – he is now director of R&D – and transformed the ice cream, making it into something that was chef-standard and viable for longer-term purposes. “We had the vision,” says Dirk, “but he had the science. He turned up just when we needed him. There must have been a general want in the universe for us to succeed.”

Their next step was to get the ice cream into theatres, like the National Theatre and the Barbican. “That was huge for us,” says Josh. “To offer theatre-goers something that is real.” They’re launching in the Royal Opera House in May. “You can get craft beer. Why not craft ice cream too – with a story and an ethic behind it?”

The fact is that Dirk, for one, is flexitarian rather than strictly vegan. “We’re not vegan warriors,” he says. “We want to produce a great ice cream that happens to be vegan.” He tested it out on his wife first of all. “She thought it had to be dairy. It has to be as good as that.”

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Dirk and Josh make a great double act. They are the UK’s answer to Ben and Jerry. But with a definite dash of Morecambe and Wise.

JOSH: Vegans shouldn’t have to accept poor-quality ice cream. Now they don’t have to any more.

DIRK: We all want to live longer and save the planet. But we all want to have good ice cream too. We’re saving the world scoop by scoop.

I reckon if the ice cream gig doesn’t work out they ought to go on stage.

JOSH: You don’t want to sit on the sofa and have something that is too worthy. You have to hit the indulgent spot. It doesn’t have to be as healthy as eating an apple.

Read More:

DIRK: If you’re happy you have ice cream. If you’re sad you have ice cream. It’s great, it’s affordable, and it makes you feel better.

Northern Bloc now has 23 employees and a custom-built factory and is looking to expand into vegan desserts and milk and kefir. “We’re very hands-on,” says Josh. “Yes,” says Dirk, “we’re still packing boxes and sweeping floors.”

@andymartinink