Angela’s Ice Cream Co-Owner Ignacio Garat.
There’s no denying that what Jason Sims and the team at Corner Bar have created downtown has been a smash success for those looking for a place to gather with friends and have a beverage and some bites.
But at the other end of that Throckmorton Ave. block, there’s also no doubt that another relative newcomer, blockbuster hangout haven for a slightly different clientele is Angela’s Organic Ice Cream, the latest edition in a long line of fantastic ice cream shops in the 94941 (shout out to Baskin Robbins’ incredibly long run ‘til it closed in 2011.
In each case, the lines out the door say it all.
Angela’s Organic Ice Cream was originally founded in Petaluma as Lala’s Creamery. Angela Garat and her son, Ignacio, purchased the business and recipes in 2017, and it’s been full speed ahead ever since.
They started with Angela’s Downtown Petaluma, and over time they have spawned Angela’s Organic Ice Cream East Petaluma, Angela’s Organic Ice Cream Forestville, Angela’s Organic Ice Cream & Angela’s Organic Ice Cream & Iggy’s Organic Burger Healdsburg Plaza.
The Garats – Angela is known as LaLa – have been driving and thriving, propelled by a desire to create the best product possible with the highest level of certification. Their eyes are wide open about the road ahead when it comes to every aspect of the business.
“There are three buckets of pain, Ignacio Garat likes to say: financing, cost of ingredients and the cost of labor. But each of those hurdles is part of the plan, as they are playing the long game, and the Mill Valley location is a crucial ingredient to all of it.
Once the Garats had laid the foundation in Petaluma and the North Bay, they began looking beyond their immediate purview. It started, not surprisingly, with grabbing a bite at Playa, one of downtown Mill Valley’s best restaurants. “There’s something about this place,” Ignacio Garat says about Mill Valley and the larger Bay Area. “There’s the beauty, the connection to the larger Bay Area. And there is the customer profile – people in this region vote with their dollars.”
Having created such a massive success in the North Bay and now in Mill Valley, the Garats already have their eyes on the horizon. “Growth is key to our long-term plans. It requires presence,” he says. “We need systems and scalability to make it work.”
“I want to get to about eight stores,” says Ignacio Garat. “That is the right intersection between talent and quality. For instance, if you have a chef across all of your locations, you can make your own oreos. If not, you’re buying them. That kind of shift would put us way closer to where we want to be.
Angela’s leans heavily, and just about entirely, on the great production in Marin County and the North Bay, spanning Marin, Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino. For example, they use Tsunami Salt in Bodega Bay, located on the Pacific coast, 54 nautical miles north of San Francisco.
“We buy 75% of our ingredients locally,” Garat says.
That horizon is California Certified Organic Farmers, an agriculture-accredited organic certifying agency and trade association, located in Santa Cruz. Formed in 1973, CCOF was the first organic certification entity in the United States. CCOF includes three legally distinct entities.
The Garats want to be able to get to 91% certification via CCOF and, eventually, to reach 95% to put 100% USDA on their products.
Angela’s small-batch ice cream is made with an organic base in Petaluma and comes in 32 flavors. The consistently changing variety ranges from classic French vanilla, milkiest chocolate and espresso crema to richly laden homemade cookie dough, caramel crack (caramel ice cream mixed with homemade saltine crackers and toffee chunks) and birthday cake to summer seasonal favorites like honest strawberry and Georgia on my mind (peaches and cream). There are eight vegan options including chocolate almond bliss and lemonade serenade.
Sugar, cake, waffle and gluten-free cones cost extra and are made from scratch. A waffle bowl is coming later this summer.
In addition to scoops, there’s a selection of sundaes (classic, caramel and brownie) and milkshakes as well as brownies and cookies (dulce de leche, lemon sugar, hazelnut, snickerdoodle and chunky chocolate) with additional vegan varieties.