Davison's Ice Cream - Factory

Good little haul today of just shy of 5,500 litres of our Ellan Vannin catering range which will be making its way up to our good friends, Robinson's Fresh Foods who we supply exclusively with this product, and which they supply to our wonderful restaurants, cafes, schools and other catering establishments around the Island 😁🍦🇮🇲

We’re all set with our selection of spicy treats for tomorrows Fire Island Chilli & BBQ Festival in Castletown square from 2pm

Ice Cream - Vanilla Habanero

Sauces:

• Raspberry Cherry bomb chilli Ripple
• Belgian chocolate and chilli ripple

We’ve also got all of our usuals on board the van for anyone who’s not feeling brave enough to eat chilli’s for starter, mains, pudding and even have it as a drink from all of the wonderful vendors who’ll be joining us in the square. Or if you simply want a good old Whippy to cool your mouth down in between courses we’ve got you covered

Firstly apologies to all our customers as we understand it must be frustrating with us being shut on a Monday and Tuesday at the minute and you’re not able to grab an ice cream on the nice days we’re having.
But trust me we’re more frustrated than you as in the nearly 30 years we’ve had a parlour on the promenade we have never had to shut the doors because of a shortage of staff.

Unfortunately it’s a sign of the times we live in as nearly every hospitality business over the last couple of years has struggled in getting staff, as we are one of the most unattractive industries to work in, long unsociable hours, hard work, lower pay it’s just the reality of the job.
In the EU for example a barista or a waiter/ess is a profession, here in the British isles it’s a Saturday job and that’s the problem as that’s what everyone portrays it as and it makes it difficult to recruit to.
When and if we eventually get staff we will be reopening on these 2 days but for the time being we just don’t have the people power to do so as believe it or not we are only a small company and not a big powerful one with lots of influence as we get portrayed by the uneducated Facebook warriors we have here on the Island, and only have 9 full time employees spread between the factory and parlour.

While we are shut however the Peel Beach Kiosk is open serving a selection of our catering range of ice cream, Ellan Vannin, which you can buy from them by the scoop.

Again apologies for the inconvenience us shutting has caused and hopefully as stated we can get back open and serving you 7 days a week again soon 😊🇮🇲🍦

It’s Filbey’s family funday tomorrow at the end of Peel prom from 12 noon, and while we still haven’t invented the hot ice cream yet we have completely upped our ice cream van game with an amazing collab with our good friends over at Filbey's who have only gone and made us some of their famously delicious STICKY TOFFEE PUDDING !!!

We’ve also got another treat available from the wonderful, don’t tell her that as her head will get bigger, Aimee Ford Ltd who’s plain and salted caramel brownies we’ve nicked from the factory 😬 to sell on the van.

All will be available Hot or Cold from the van with either a Whippy ice cream or scoop of your choice and are the perfect desert after you’ve tucked in to the fabulous food available on the day 😁🍦🇮🇲

The hottest event, literally, to hit this years events calendar is taking place next Saturday 21st @ Castletown square

The .iom chilli and BBQ festival will be heating up the square from 2pm onwards, and we’ve been told that to attend we need to get our chilli game on again, so we’ll be spicing up some treats to serve to you all.

However, don’t worry if your a lemon and herb 😜 kind of person as we’ll have our usual selection of award winning ice creams on the van also 🇮🇲🌶️ 🌶️🌶️🌶️🍦🍦🍦🍦🇮🇲

Come and join us all this weekend for another fun filled Filbey's family funday at the end of Peel prom. 🤞 the weather is as nice as it was last weekend 😁☀️🍦🇮🇲

Date for your diary…this Sunday 15th September! We have another Family Fun Day at the end of the prom in Peel from 12pm - 6pm…we’ll be joined by our lovely friends … with delicious tacos on their menu - (watch out for our taco collab ‘Reef & Beef’!), for your tasty ice cream treats, bringing crazy golf fun for all the family, putting on some activities for the kids to get involved in, face painting delights for everyone, beautiful temporary henna tattoos & live acoustic music from 1pm - 4pm from &
It’s going to be an epic day…come down to Peel & enjoy some family fun!

Now the summer season, although it hasn’t really happened, has come to an end we have gone on to our winter opening hours.
Please also note that due to staffing constraints the parlour will be shut on Mondays and Tuesdays for the foreseeable, however, this may change at some point. 😊🍦🇮🇲

Come and join us at the ever entertaining World Tin Bath Championships this Saturday in Castletown harbour, it’s well worth a watch if you’ve never been before 😊🍦🇮🇲

Programme of events for

Scrutineering starts at 11:30 to 13:00.

Roads shut at 13:00

See you Saturday 😀

Due to the delightful Manx weather we’ve had all summer the Parlour will be shutting a little earlier today, roughly around 3.30pm. Apologies for any issues this may cause ☔️ 🍦🇮🇲

The parlour will be opening a little later, 12 noon, this coming Sunday 1st September while we have a quick end of season team meeting. Apologies if this causes any inconvenience for any of our morning regulars. 😊🍦🇮🇲

Firstly, thank you to DEFA- Isle of Man Food and Drink for the admitting the fault was your own and not ours for the royal show fiasco and also thank you for your apology. While it doesn’t change the outcome/ negativity we received from the weekend it at least goes a long way in helping to keep things positive between ourselves and the department going into the future 😊🍦🇮🇲

Our now infamous Royal Show fiasco – (Epic but informative post I’m afraid)

After some time away from social media, mainly due to the onslaught of hatred we received over the Royal Show weekend, we thought it time to share with you all our side of the story as we are quite literally fed up with being portrayed as the villain in this and are still having hatred thrown at us constantly over the whole ordeal. Our side adds in some information that was missing from original posts put on social media by another local business.

For context - the attached picture is an email, sent in June this year from a local Gelato business (who may, or may not have put up a social media post up the night before the show) to 2 members of Tynwald in relation to their rejection from the Royal show and the agreement in place between ourselves and the Royal Show, (this email was sent to us from an anonymous source and any personal info within it not already available in the public domain has been blanked out)

• Firstly, I’d like to state that The Royal Show, and Southern Shows are privately run entities, made up of a voluntary committee who all do a cracking job at both events, and is in no way run or controlled by the government as a lot of social media comments put up would have led you to believe, with some accusing us of paying the government off to attend the shows which aren’t run by them, makes perfect sense.

• To answer the main comment made - yes, we have a legal agreement in place with both the Royal and Southern Shows, both for a 10-year period with the Royal’s agreement ending after next year’s show in 2025, and the Southern’s ending in 2029. These legal agreements were put into place in 2015 and 2019 respectfully, and all other producers in existence at this time had every right to go for them as we did.

• Why so long an agreement period I hear you ask ? well because we operate a business that is very weather dependant and customers do not eat ice cream in the rain, except the odd loyal fan, and if the shows have 2-3 years on the trot where it rains, which does happen a lot, we don’t break even, so you need this period to hope for a nice weather show in between. We also have to reinvest heavily into vans to attend these shows which don’t pay for themselves in a single show.

• These agreements are in place as it gives both shows a guaranteed amount for sponsorship/ income each year and also a guarantee we’ll have vans attending their shows regardless of the weather, and in return gives us exclusivity for the sale of ice cream, gelato and other related products at the events.

• These agreements aren’t uncommon practise in business, or government for that matter who run similar agreements through their procurement services for products and services. We had a similar agreement in place with Shoprite for 25+ years whereby we wouldn’t supply Tesco with our products in exchange for exclusivity as an Isle of Man ice cream producer in their stores, and this agreement ran right up until they sold the business on in 2023.

• Down to the actual facts: DEFA and the Gelato Producer, who sent the attached email, were both well aware this agreement was in place as DEFA had it written into their lease with the Royal Show 10 years ago, and the Gelato company clearly stating on their email from June this year, in the 1st line of the 3rd paragraph , that they have tried to attend and been rejected from the shows 5-6 times before (shows only held once a year, so 3 years prior knowledge of this agreement), and also again in the last 2 lines of the 4th paragraph stating about their knowledge of this agreement in 2019 highlighted to them by a member of the DEFA team.

• As DEFA, who we feel are most to blame for this situation arising, are only an exhibitor like ourselves on these shows they had no right to promise companies attendance in their marquee on any of the shows without prior permission, especially knowing full well that there was a legal agreement in place between the show and a sponsor years before the 2024 show took place.

• The fact that these promises were made by DEFA because of the Food and drink festival cancellation is not an issue we created but DEFA themselves, and they then shouldn’t have tried to use what we perceive to be underhanded techniques to gain access to these shows for a producer who they knew full well would contravene the legal agreement already in place.

• The Gelato producer themselves was not blindsided by this news either, knowing full well this agreement was already in place, as stated in their email from June.

• I also find it amusing that the Gelato producer clearly states, paragraph 4 line 6, that they feel they are being singled out by 2 show Committees who they perceive to be getting paid off by another business (clearly referring to ourselves indirectly as the business as that’s who the agreement is with).

• Are these allegations against us and the Shows committee of corruption? You can decide that one, but I can 100% guarantee you this isn’t the case and the only monies paid to each of the shows are those stated under the agreement of the legal contracts in place.

• After these potential allegations of corruption, I find it funny that the Gelato producer then goes on in paragraph 5 to try and get DEFA to use their political power as landlords of the Royal Show, to basically bully a privately run show into being held accountable for having a legal agreement like this in place, which the show is legally allowed to have in place with whomever they see fit without prior government approval.

• You can also clearly see in the last paragraph of the email that the Gelato producer states about their involvement in the Costa Coffee franchise on Island, which after reading the tender documents for the Sea Terminal shops up for rent, I believe they might too just have a similar exclusivity agreement in place with the Government as we do with the show, as you aren’t allowed to apply for one of these units if you are doing anything similar to another business already established there. So, where’s the fair competition (as we had fired at us) in this scenario for other businesses wanting to start up in the coffee industry in a perfect sized small affordable unit, and what is the difference between this and the agreement we have in place with the Shows? There is none.

• We’re all for fair competition which is why ourselves and Manx ices are both present at the TT and MGP, which we tender for yearly, but we feel in relation to the shows we have been treated unfairly by 2 organisations who both had prior knowledge of these agreements being in place and which were entered into fairly in the first place. It isn’t a fault of ours that this Gelato producer wasn’t even in existence when we entered both of these agreements, that’s just unlucky on their part, but they will get the chance to tender for them against ourselves and others if they come up again, which will be down to the committees to decide.

I hope this post will stop this matter from arising each week now that both sides of the story are out there, or that is until the local media (excluding Energy FM, who got our side first before publishing anything) twist it to suit themselves again as they did with the last post, simply to gain engagement by twisting their posts to include ourselves, even though we were never mentioned in the original post.

I will be turning comments off on this post after all the negativity and hatred myself and my family were subjected to surrounding the whole situation at the Royal and we’ll leave it down to you to make your own opinions on this matter from here.
Apologies for the lengthy post but we had to get our facts across

So let’s address this new one doing the rounds today, firstly our name doesn’t have a ‘d’ in it as we make ice cream not motorbikes 😜.

Secondly please if you’re going to compare products on price and quantity make sure you compare them to similar quality products made using the same/ similar ingredients. I can produce cheaper ice cream made using Palm oil like most of the cheaper supermarket products use, instead of using locally produced cream and butter like we do. If I used Palm oil in my recipe I could save myself over £200,000 a year. However, by using Palm oil I wouldn’t be benefiting our local farming community which is struggling at the minute and the product I make wouldn’t be anywhere near as good.

We also only service 85,000 people here on the Island instead of the millions based in the U.K. like large ice cream producers do which means we don’t benefit from the same economies of scale as large companies do. Take for example Mackies ice cream in Scotland who produce upwards of 20,000 litres of ice cream a day and can afford to make 5p profit on each tubs because of their volumes being produced which allows them to keep the cost of their products to the bare minimum because of the quantities they produce being that great that they still make a healthy profit. I produce roughly 10,000 - 20,000 litres a week during the summer months, if it’s sunny.

We also have the most expensive strip of water to bring packaging, sugars and flavourings over which adds massive costs straight away. All of the supermarkets here on the island at present pay for these shipping costs themselves for their stores and not the producers who supply them in the U.K., meaning the producers don’t have to factor this into their pricing, where as I have to pay these costs for my goods before I even think about making them into anything, and these costs aren’t cheap.

Making any products on the Isle of Man small scale is expensive and if people were in business themselves they’d realise this. I’d love to offer promotions on our products but I’d be out of business by the end of the year if we did as our margins are slim enough trying to keep prices as low as we can to compete with the cheaper products coming in from across.

You also have to remember that the price charged in a supermarket isn’t the price I charge them to buy the goods in the first place.

Lastly if you were to compare pricing against like for like products, like Haagan Daz which has nearly the same ingredients as ours you’d find our product is actually a lot of the time cheaper than theirs and that’s while using Isle of Man cream and butter to produce our products.

Sorry for the lengthy post and rant but we seem to be facing a constant battle at the minute with Facebook post going up and I just wanted to put our point across on this one.

Many thanks Greig 😊🍦🇮🇲

We popped into HQ yesterday with the ice cream van whilst we were passing to serve the last remaining team members up there with an ice cream as a little thank you for the custom and support we had from them all over the last 29 years we’ve been making ice cream and supplying them ice cream. We want to wish the whole Shoprite family all the best for whatever the future brings and we’ll no doubt see you all out and about over the next few years at the shows and events we attend around the Island, thank you 🙏 😊🍦🇮🇲

Don’t forget it’s the Southern Agricultural show this weekend, and for the first time in a few years it’s looking to be a sunny one ☀️😁. As we have done for many years we’ll be sponsoring the supreme champion of the show and will have our ice cream vans dotted around the show ground to keep you cool and refreshed while wondering around looking at all the other amazing stalls and attractions 😁🍦🇮🇲

🛎️ last chance for early bird tickets 🛎️

🌞 The Sun looks like it’s going to be out for the Weekend so Save time and beat the queues by purchasing your tickets in advance here https://southernshow.org/tickets/

Ticket price will increase from Thursday 🚜🐮

Chocolate Ripple Special - I was asked the other week for this old classic flavour, vanilla ice cream with lots of chocolatey goodness throughout and which I haven’t made for nearly 20 years. Although I’m only 36 that’s sounds like so long ago now 😬, and I’ve just realised I’ve been making ice cream for 2/3rds of my life which is even scarier 😂. Anyway back to the ice cream it’ll be available in the Peel parlour from this weekend until it sells out 😁🍦🇮🇲

It’s Laa Tinvaal (Tynwald day) here on our glorious little Island, the sun is shining and we are all set up on the show field with the ice cream van (The Davison’s branded van) to keep you thoroughly freshed while skeeting around all the great stalls out here 😁🇮🇲🇮🇲🇮🇲🍦🍦🍦

So I’ve been made aware of a post circulating this morning with regards to the apparent concession we have for Whippy ice cream in Peel and how no one else is allowed to sell Whippy in Peel under this concession 🤔.
I was just wondering if the person who put this post up could DM me with some more details on where they got the info about this concession as I’d be really interested in looking into getting this apparent concession as it would be absolutely brilliant for business, as I’m sure The Cod and Castle would love the Peel chip concession and The Coffee Station for the Peel coffee concession and The Creek Inn for the alcohol with a meal concession 😏.
And in case you hadn’t twigged this is complete nonsense as no such concessions for businesses operating in Peel exist nor would they, and people spreading made up nonsense like this are only trying to destroy businesses. Anyway the Whippy is still on and will be for the whole of summer if this post has made you fancy a Whippy 😁🇮🇲🍦

Being 36 I don’t have GCSE or A Level results to worry about anymore but for me, for some reason, I always get the same nervousness waiting for my Micro-bacterial analysis results from the government lab, even though with all the measures I have in place I shouldn’t worry, for some reason it always brings back that same nervous feeling.
Safe to say our random sampling results came back absolutely clear so your all still safe to carry on eating our delicious range of ice creams 😁🍦🇮🇲