An ice cream dream

Glacier FarmMedia – It all started with a scoop of blueberry cheesecake ice cream from a creamery in Sicamous, B.C., more than ten years ago.

About 13 years old, John Pruim was on a family road trip back to the province where he had spent his early years when the taste of farm fresh ice cream stirred something inside him.

“I’ve always loved ice cream and taking the milk from your own cows and making it into ice cream — I just loved that idea,” he says.

“So, it became a dream at that point.”

Many years later he got serious about making that dream a reality.

After moving away from the family dairy near Osler, Sask., completing an agriculture degree at the University of Guelph, and spending some time travelling abroad, Pruim decided to enrol in an ice cream and gelato-making course in Italy.

“I could have looked it up online, but anybody can look it up online — it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to make a good product,” he says. “If I was going to do it, I wanted to learn how to do it properly.”

After completing the course in 2020, he came back to Saskatchewan and started to look for the right location, knowing he wanted the business to be more than just a retail shop but also an agri-tourism destination.

With the help and support of his parents, he homed in on a location just off Highway 11 near Warman, Sask., a piece of land with a large barn on it, which he began to outfit into its current processing, retail and storage space.

Twin Peaks Creamery opened its doors in spring 2023 and Pruim’s dream became a reality.

Support and a little luck

The first year and a half of operating have perhaps felt a bit like a dream for Pruim, with strong demand, quickly expanding product lines, and retail and wholesale opportunities.

But Pruim is also very open about how much work has gone on behind the scenes to make this dream a hard-earned reality and how grateful he is for the support — and lucky breaks — he had along the way.

Early on in the process, he realized he was lucky that he wasn’t the first business of this type in the province. Sunnyside Creamery, another dairy agri-tourism business located north of Saskatoon on Highway 12, cleared a pathway for him, he says.

“They did a lot of the legwork with SaskMilk and the province back when they started up. They cleared a lot of the red tape.”

SaskMilk, which implements programs for the provincial dairy industry, was also very supportive of the Twin Peaks venture, says Pruim, who is a licensed milk truck driver.

“They made it really easy to pick up my own milk and process it, and get the licenses to do everything,” he says. “They haven’t made it unnecessarily hard to do any of this stuff.”

He says he also felt supported by the Saskatchewan Health Authority, the province’s food safety body, which has guided him through regulation processes since early in his journey.

“They’ve been a huge help.”

And he says he is lucky to have the support of his parents, Art and Elaine Pruim, who operate Plum Blossom Farms, a dairy farm in Osler, Sask., and who are investors, owners and shareholders in the Twin Peaks business.

“Mom and Dad financed the building, so they built the actual shell. I’ve done everything inside, with a little help from the bank.”

Although the creamery is designed to help add value the family dairy farm, getting its products to consumers in new and novel ways and forms, the creamery is structured as an entirely separate business, Pruim says.

“It just works better long term,” he says, adding his brother is currently running the family farm. “The idea isn’t that it gets paired up.”

Pruim says he also caught a lucky break when it came to acquiring equipment for his venture, as he began his search for equipment during the pandemic years, when many other ventures were going out of business. Because of this, he was able to acquire some of his big pieces, including an ice cream-making machine, a display case, and even the ice cream pasteurizer, at a steep discount.

He did have to buy a few items new, like a milk fat testing machine, homogenizer and milk receiving tank, but the vast majority of his equipment was purchased second-hand or at auctions, he says.

“I figured I saved probably about $300,000 to 350,000 just on finding used equipment.”

Entrepreneurialism in the blood

Pruim says one of the greatest challenges he faced was having to learn so much, so quickly.

“We were flying by the seat of our pants a little bit, because we’d never done processing before. We’d never done retail before.”

But challenging himself like this made him realize how much he was actually capable of.

Growing up on a dairy farm, he says he learned early on how to work hard and be resourceful.

“You get taught how to work, and you just know what to look for to find stuff.”

This farm-bred resourcefulness also compelled him to arm himself with as much information as possible along his journey and leverage the experience and expertise of others.

For example, as he was setting up the business, he decided to take a pasteurization course in Manitoba to sharpen his skills. He also spent time touring milk plants in Ontario, B.C. and Alberta in the years before Twin Peaks was launched.

“I picked a lot of brains on why they built it that way, or what they would change and whatnot.”

Throughout all this often tiring work, he was guided by a strong vision: he wanted to start something of his own, creating a product he loved, using ingredients from his own family farm.

“I figured out probably five to 10 years ago that I was getting tired of working for people. I guess I’ve been blessed with the entrepreneurial thing,” he says, adding both his dad and grandpa ran their own businesses.

“It’s in the blood.”

A bright and busy future

Although Pruim can now safely say his dream has become a reality, there isn’t much time to celebrate.

After two summers in business, he says demand for the existing product is growing and he’s figuring out how to expand his product line and reach.

This is exemplified by the fact that his original 15-litre pasteurizer is already tapped out. It will be replaced by a 500-litre machine, which will allow him to produce and create more to serve growing demand. He plans to start offering milk, cream, eggnog and chocolate milk in the near future, and making ice cream cakes.

“I think that (ice cream cakes) is going to take on a life of its own, which kinda scares me a little bit,” he laughs.

He will also continue to run the business as usual, as well as host events and tours at the space and he has plans to continue to expand the availability of his products. His ice cream is already available in two retail locations in Warman, Sask., and most recently at the Children’s Hospital café in Saskatoon.

“That’s gone incredibly well since they started that up in July.”

He says he’s also focused on wholesale expansion, which will be more cost effective with his new pasteurizer.

“It’s going to make the option of selling four-litre and eleven-litre pails just a little bit more palatable for people pricewise,” he says.

“Right now, the cost is absolutely insane just because of labour and materials — especially on the labour side.”

Advice for other ventures

If other producers are considering expanding their businesses through value-added ventures, Pruim’s advice is to do it — with a few caveats.

First of all, he believes it’s critical to have a solid, compelling product.

In his case, that’s the ice cream, which is unique for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it has a higher milk fat content than traditional ice creams (at about 13 per cent, it’s comparable to Häagen-Dazs).

Secondly, it’s more of a hybrid between traditional ice cream, which is harder and colder in the mouth, and gelato, which is softer and meltier.

He also uses all natural ingredients for flavours.

“When you see a pumpkin pie in the display case or a blueberry cheesecake, that bright orange or bright purple is the colour I got out of the fruit. I think that makes a world of difference.”

He also believes it’s critical for business owners to be passionate about their product.

“Finding a route to diversify is not hard. But if you’re just in it for the money, I don’t think it’s going to be as successful. It just turns out better when people can see that you actually care about what you’re making.”

This advice is personal, as he says his strong belief in his product and dream has carried him through 16-hour workdays, five months of the year (winter months are a bit slower, but not much).

Overall, Pruim believes there’s a bright future for agri-tourism ventures in the province, as he’s learned since opening his doors that people are increasingly seeking a more direct connection to their food and the farms that produce it.

“The amount of people that ask questions, want to look through the window and see how the process works… the knowledge that people want is just incredible. They’re so disconnected now.”

“If you can find a way to show people where the food’s coming from, how it’s grown, that’s much needed.”

And when those people ask him what type of Twin Peaks ice cream to try first, he says it always comes back to the blueberry cheesecake.

“It’s the flavour that started off this whole idea. That’s always been one of my favourites. And I just love blueberries.”

– This article was originally published in the January 2025 issue of Country Guide.