Ice cream rethought

July/August 2023 California Bountiful magazine 

Former addict’s creation contributes to good health
and his favorite causes

Story by Linda DuBois
Ice cream photos by Fred Greaves
Farm photos courtesy of Hollandia Dairy

Meghan Hanson of El Dorado Hills, a professional nutrition and weight-loss coach, is careful about what she and her family eat.

So, when they want dessert or just have a hankering for something sweet, she tries to choose treats that aren’t loaded with added sugar.

During the summertime, her favorite go-to is ReThink Ice Cream. She likes that it has less than half the sugar of most ice cream brands as well as added collagen, fiber and protein. She keeps a carton in the freezer most of the time.

“It honestly tastes like a traditional ice cream. You wouldn’t think it’s a healthier food item,” she says. “I have 6-year-old triplets and they love it. It’s nice to have something that they enjoy and that I feel good giving to them.”

Hanson likes several of the brand’s seven flavors (cardamom pistachio, coffee hazelnut, black cherry vanilla, chocolate majesty, lemon poppy seed, mint with chocolate flakes and vanilla supreme) but has a clear favorite. “I buy the coffee hazelnut on repeat,” she says.

Pursuit of health

When former restaurant operator George Haymaker founded ReThink Ice Cream in Napa in 2018, he was on his own journey toward health.

He was sober following years of battling alcohol and pain-pill addiction but craved the sugar he once found in alcohol. So, he had turned to ice cream—a lot of it.

“I soon realized that I was just transferring addictions from one thing to the next and I was feeling and showing the effects of all the sugar and calories,” he says. “I knew that to find total health of mind, body and spirit, I needed to eat better.”

Yet, he wasn’t ready to give up the comfort and pleasure he derived from a delicious bowl of ice cream. Instead, he searched store shelves for a lower-calorie version, only to be disappointed. “A lot of them were airy, chalky or icy. They just didn’t have the creamy mouthfeel or satisfaction of traditional ice cream,” he says.

“So, I set about making my own.”

Getting the formula right “was kind of a long, involved process,” Haymaker says. “Originally, it took about six months, but, frankly, I’ve been tweaking it ever since. … I’ve worked with four or five food scientists now.”

Besides getting the taste and consistency right, he also wanted to make sure his creation could be enjoyed by as many people as possible, including those with intolerances to gluten or dairy.

So, he avoided any gluten-containing flavorings, colorings or thickeners sometimes found in other ice cream brands.

And, while he himself has no trouble digesting milk, he knew millions of other Americans suffer from cramping, gas and other digestive upsets from consuming dairy products.

“This is either because of the lactose (milk sugar) or the A1 protein found in most cow milk,” Haymaker says. “So, I wanted to solve both of those problems by taking out the lactose and using exclusively milk with A2 protein,” the casein protein found in human breast milk, as well as in goat and sheep milk, but in only some cows’ milk.

A perfect partnership

His search for cows that could source A2-protein milk led him to Hollandia Dairy. Headquartered in San Marcos where it runs a processing plant, the company owns a dairy farm with 2,700 A2-protein Holsteins in San Jacinto.

The business was founded by Arie de Jong, a dairyman from Holland, after settling with his family in Southern California in 1949. It remains family owned. The descendants also own several other dairies throughout California, with a total of about 60,000 cows.

When Haymaker discovered Hollandia, he was immediately impressed.

“They have a certification for the humane treatment of animals. They have heating and cooling huts to keep the cows comfortable and special food with recipes for each cow depending on its stage of life,” Haymaker says.

“They vacuum up all the manure, so the gasses won’t degrade the ozone and then they put it underground in a digester and it recycles it, removing the methane, making it into a non-harmful fuel to drive their trucks and tractors around. Then they use the solids from the manure as fertilizer for the crops that they grow for their cow food,” he continues.

“Plus, they have their own water well and they recycle their water, so they get multiple uses out of it.”

Hollandia CEO Patrick Schallberger says that sustainability is a high priority for the company.

“Here at the milk plant, we have 25 vehicles that run off near-zero-emission natural gas that are replacing diesel-burning trucks, and we’re trying to put even more digesters on the dairies,” he says. Hollandia also uses large solar-power systems at the plant and several dairies.

He explains how the A2 herd has been slowly built up at the San Jacinto dairy farm over about the past five years to serve smaller, niche businesses, such as ReThink Ice Cream.

“We raise our own heifers,” Schallberger says. “Typically, about 30% of Holsteins are naturally A2. So, we test them to see which ones have the A2 genes and then send those to that dairy. If you breed them with an A2 bull, then they’ll have A2 calves. So, over time, we can have the whole herd A2 through breeding.”

Haymaker was Hollandia’s first customer for the A2 milk, Schallberger says. “We feel like we have a partnership with him. We definitely want to support him. I think his product is well thought out and he’s really got a lot of passion for what he’s doing. He also has a quality ice cream. He’s done a good job.”

From the dairy to the customer

After leaving Hollandia, the milk goes to Thrifty Ice Cream in El Monte, which makes and packages the ice cream for ReThink. It’s sold at specialty markets, some large grocery chains throughout the state and on the ReThink website.

As Haymaker builds the company, he’s focusing on expanding a founding goal: generating resources to support causes he cares most about, especially those serving people with addiction issues.

Now of El Dorado Hills, Haymaker has organized several ice-cream fundraisers for mental health causes, wildlife foundations and local schools.

“What I would find most rewarding is being able to reach the point where I’m satisfying my mission, which is to help others,” he says. “That’s really what I’m in this for.”

To help reach a broader customer base, he’s expanded his marketing strategy. “We’re still focused on the fact that it’s a healthier product, but our new logo states that it’s a ‘kinder ice cream’—kinder to the tummy, the cow, the environment and the community.”

That mission resonates especially well with young adults.

“One of the main pivots is we are now targeting university students,” Haymaker says. “They’re really supportive of what our brand stands for.”

The ice cream is now on about 20 university campuses. He and his marketing manager get help from a marketing intern on each campus.

“They’re involved with everything from sampling at markets, sororities or residential dorms to creating social media on campus with cool videos, to dropping flyers underneath dorm doors,” Haymaker says.

Meanwhile, Haymaker himself remains one of the ice cream’s biggest fans. He eats about a carton a day, rotating among the flavors, with no clear favorite.

“You know, I’m not going to lie and say that I don’t have a sweet tooth,” he says with a chuckle. “I go through stretches where I’m eating other sweets that are not as healthy for me, but I always try to come back to ReThink and have that be my staple.” 

Linda DuBois