People say our original Lafayette Square location is St. Louis’ best-kept secret, it’s a hidden gem, located in a very cool and historic part of the city. Very vibrant. We have about 500 square feet, which was our proof of concept store, it’s on 18th and Lafayette. You have to drive to get to it, you’re like “where am I going?”, but then you’ll see it at the end of the block. It’s really cute, it’s really quaint, quite magical.
We get so many tourists because it’s close to downtown where everything is happening. Thank goodness to Yelp and a lot of the social media companies that I’ve interacted and worked with, they really draw in a lot of customers to my location.
Naughty in Lafayette Square?
Let me explain Clementine’s Naughty and Nice Creamery, the ‘naughty’ refers to our patent-pending transfer process for fusing alcohol into ice cream, up to 18%. We have a whole line of naughty, boozy, fun ice creams for adults. We have a special trade secret process that we figured out and no one else can make boozy ice cream. Of course our nice ice cream is for everybody!
The only micro-creamery in 5 states!
We are the first and only micro-creamery here in the state of Missouri, and within five states actually. There’s only 14 micro creameries in the country. So that’s pretty cool.What is a “micro-creamery”. Think micro brewing for beer, but for ice cream. There are five requirements that have to be meet in order to be a micro-creamery.
Number one, you have to be small batch. Your ice cream can’t be made in big industrious machines. We make every batch with love and by hand in our small little ice cream machine.
Number two, everything that goes into our ice cream has to be hand crafted. We salt our own caramels, candy our own pecans, if there’s pie, cake, or cookie in it, we make it, bake it, put it in it, unless we’re partnering with someone like Park Avenue coffee, who makes the best gooey butter-cake in St. Louis.
The third qualification is having all-natural ingredients. We are the only ice cream maker in the state of Missouri that is 100% natural. We use no artificial flavors, fillers, colors, emulsifiers, stabilizers or anything, just natural ingredients. This makes our ice cream taste a lot better, it doesn’t put all that junk in your body, it was really important to me to do that.
Fourth, in order to be a micro-creamery, our ice cream has to be made with at least 16% butter fat. In contrast, anything else you get at anywhere else, or at a grocery store has around 10% butter fat. All of our ice creams have to be 16 to 18%, depending on the flavor, and that really is what makes the ice cream really rich and dense and creamy, and basic. When you take a bite, and a minute later you’re still tasting this wonderful goodness in your mouth, that’s the butter fat in the ice cream that’s driving that. Most store brands only have around 10%, some have 12% butter fat.
The last component in order to be micro-creamery is all about the overrun, which is the amount of air that goes into the ice cream. in order to be a micro-creamery, you have to have less than 30% overrun or the amount of air that is whipped into the ice cream. Our ice cream has less than that, it’s about 26 to 28%, so we definitely meet that under 30% threshold. That actually results in the creaminess and the density. If you pick up a pint of my vanilla, It’s heavier than any other brand out there because it has far less air. If you buy a pint of any other brand of ice cream, you’re actually only getting 50% ice cream and the rest is air, so that’s about 100% overrun that they whip into the ice cream.
They don’t want you know this…
A-lot of the ice cream people don’t like sharing this information! I’m all about educating the consumer and you should have nothing but the best quality.
The “magic threshold”
We have what we call our “magic threshold”. This is the threshold when you walk into the store. At Clementine’s, we never have had an unhappy customer. It doesn’t matter what’s going on in the world out there, cause when you come through our door, and over our threshold, your life is instantly better. People always have a smile on their face. They might come in through the door and be down, but when they come into the store, they smell the fresh made waffle cones, they see the ice cream they like, I mean you can physically see the change in people when they come into our store.
Everyone loves gift cards!
Our Clementine’s gift cards are great anytime of the year. you can’t go wrong when you get someone who has everything Clementine’s ice cream! Gift cards tend to be really popular. We have parents who come in and they’ll buy a bunch of gift cards that they’ll hand out to all their kids teachers.
contact: Clementine’s Naughty & Nice Creamery