The Product
Straus Family Creamery introduced its Organic Plain Soft Serve Ice Cream Mix at Conecon 2026, the North American Ice Cream Association's annual trade event for frozen dessert professionals, expanding its foodservice soft serve lineup to three SKUs. The new mix targets cafés, scoop shops, and full-service restaurants that want proprietary flavor development without sacrificing an organic dairy credential.
Formulated at 10% butterfat — higher than the 8% in Straus' existing Vanilla and Dutch Chocolate mixes — Plain is made without egg yolks and contains 30% less sugar than the Vanilla SKU, a deliberate spec designed to give operators a neutral canvas. The base combines organic nonfat milk, organic cream, organic cane sugar, and plant-based stabilizers. It carries USDA Organic and Non-GMO Project verification and uses no artificial flavors, colors, or preservatives.
Operator Use Case
The format is built for speed and simplicity on the operator side: the mix pours directly into a soft serve machine from a frozen 1-gallon jug — four jugs per case — with a 180-day shelf life and no on-site prep. Operators can serve it straight for a clean dairy flavor or customize it by blending in matcha powder, syrups, or fruit purees to build a house signature. That flexibility positions the SKU squarely in the growing better-for-you frozen dessert segment, where organic and clean-label claims are increasingly table stakes for independent scoop shops and upscale fast-casual chains alike.
"Our foodservice customers choose Straus for the quality of the organic milk and cream behind every serving," said Jim Peck, vice president of sales at Straus Family Creamery. "Plain lets operators customize their soft serve without giving up that quality, which opens up an opportunity for shops that want a soft serve menu that's entirely their own."
At Conecon booth No. 228, the creamery is running live samples on a PASMO America soft serve machine — a practical demonstration that lets prospective buyers evaluate machine compatibility and draw consistency before committing. Samples are paired with caramel from King's Cupboard, a Montana-based sauce producer, illustrating the kind of limited-time offering and topping pairing an operator might build around the base.
Context and Lineup
The Plain mix rounds out a three-product soft serve portfolio alongside Straus' Organic Vanilla — made with organic vanilla extract — and Organic Dutch Chocolate, produced with real organic Dutch cocoa. Both legacy mixes use organic egg yolks and run at 8% butterfat. Operators running a batch freezer rather than a soft serve machine can use a separate Straus product, the Organic Ice Cream Base, a 15% butterfat crème anglaise formulated with organic cream, milk, sugar, and egg yolks for scoopable applications.
The Northern California creamery has supplied the foodservice channel with organic dairy since its 1994 founding as the first 100% certified organic creamery in the United States. The soft serve lineup fits a broader operator trend toward ingredient-forward, premium frozen dessert programs that can support higher menu price points and differentiate independents from chain competitors. For procurement teams evaluating organic-certified suppliers, Straus draws its milk supply exclusively from family farms in Marin and Sonoma Counties, a provenance story with demonstrable menu marketing value.
Conecon runs November 10–12 at the Palm Springs Convention Center. Foodservice buyers can review wholesale specs and request samples via the Straus wholesale product page. For broader context on the organic dairy segment's traction in commercial foodservice channels, demand for clean-label frozen dessert bases has outpaced conventional SKU growth for the past three years across both independent and emerging-chain operators.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
