Own-label desserts and ice creams supplier Icefresh Foods has launched what it claims is the first retail product to offer kiosk-style soft, whipped ice cream.

Rolling out to three of the big four supermarkets next month under new brand Mr Swirly, the ice cream comes in a four-pack of cones topped with pieces of milk chocolate (rsp: £1.99). Each cone has a plastic dome on top to protect the soft ice cream and preserve the swirled shape.

Icefresh, best known for its own-label products and licensed lines under brands including Star Wars and Peppa Pig, said it had developed a new manufacturing process and experimented with different types of sugar to produce Mr Swirly. The ice cream is manufactured for Icefresh in Belgium.

“There is nothing we’ve seen on the market that is as close to the texture and taste of the iconic ice cream van or kiosk ice cream,” Icefresh MD Phil Webster told The Grocer. “As soon as we realised we had the capacity to produce perfect soft whipped ice cream, we knew we had a real opportunity on our hands.”

The company is now looking at other formats for the whipped ice cream. Webster said single-packed impulse products were a likely move, “if the reaction to Mr Swirly is as positive as we hope it will be”.

“We don’t have a colossal budget for marketing support, and we gained our supermarket listings purely on the presentation and taste of the product,” he added.

Mr Swirly will be stocked by Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s.

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