Much Moore Ice Cream won a number of trophies at the NZ Ice Cream and Gelato Awards on Friday. Photo / Supplied
Much Moore Ice Cream won a number of trophies at the NZ Ice Cream and Gelato Awards on Friday. Photo / Supplied
Ice cream connoisseur Marcus Moore, founder of Auckland based ice cream firm Much Moore Ice Cream, talks winning the best in ice cream awards two years in a row, navigating inflationary pressures and why an ice cream bar is in the firm's future plans.
What does your business do?
Icecream has been in my family for over 30 years, and it was around 20 years ago when I bought my family out and took over the business and I rebranded it and turned it into the Much Moore Ice Cream company. We sell ice cream, frozen yoghurt and ice blocks on a stick.
Our key markets are New Zealand through the supermarkets, and we have become a reasonably large exporter across Asia, Australia and throughout the South Pacific. In the last five years our export markets have grown significantly - particularly in the last two.
My family had a frozen food business. They were a frozen food distributor, and they had their own brand of vegetables. They also carried ice cream and they decided to start their own ice cream business as part of that in 1992. And I started with the business in 1995. It was one of my first projects within the business. I took ownership in 2004 and my family started the food business in the late 70s.
I'm so passionate about the product that it has become a huge part of my life, and I thought that it was appropriate that the business name had some sort of connection to me. It is my life blood and my life's work, pride and joy. I was 25 when I started working on the ice cream business and I'm now 51 - it is part of my DNA.
What can you tell us about Much Moore Ice Cream's recent awards?
On Friday night we won trophies for three of the 14 championship categories at the 2022 NZ Ice Cream and Gelato Awards. At the end of August we also won four gold medals.
One of those is for our chocolate cookies and fudge product, which is very well-known to New Zealanders. It is one of the most popular ice creams on the shelf and what we have done with that product is premiumised it even further and made it more indulgent and we have turned it into a premium export product. That's us for best chocolate ice cream, and it also won a gold medal for new to market as well.
Our trophy wins include the Tetra Pak Export Ice Cream Award for our private label Cookies & Cream Ice Cream and the Fonterra New Zealand Standard Vanilla Ice Cream Award for our Wonders Vanilla Ice Cream. We also took home the Hawkins Watts, New to Market Award for our Chocolate Cookies and Fudge Overload Ice Cream.
I'm extremely excited. These are fantastic awards for all the hard work the team puts in. To celebrate the win, we had a morning tea for our staff on Friday.
How big is your team?
When we started there was a team of 10 and there are close to 100 of us these days. We are based on Auckland's North Shore in Glenfield, that's where our factory is. Commercially we would be classified a medium-sized business.
What's your main focus right now?
I'm spread right across the business, I've got my fingers in multiple pies but with being on the cusp of summer we're preparing our factory for the summer uplift in sales and ensuring we have stock in place for our customers over the busy period.
We go through a recruitment process and put on extra shifts, so there is a lot of training and development that happens, a lot of coaching and a lot of team work in the next few months. We sell approximately 30 per cent more ice cream from the months of November through to March. It is a busy season of preparation.
Annually we sell between 30-36 million litres of ice cream. We are steadily growing in excess of 10 per cent year on year.
Much Moore Ice Cream founder and owner Marcus Moore. Photo / Supplied
What's the biggest issue facing your industry?
The labour shortage is one of the biggest issues we are facing at the moment, and inflation. We are working through these the best we can, doing everything possible we can to manage costs but inflation has been so significant that we are forced to pass that cost on.
We've had to increase our prices twice this year, once recently and we have another going into market at the moment.
Where do you see the business in three to five years' time?
Retailing in terms of what you would call a promotional opportunity with a retail shop is something on the cards within the next couple of years. Our growth overseas is also going so well that I think there is plenty of opportunity to expand that too. There is a lot more we can do in Australia and Asia, in particular. They are our focus markets. We won't need to hire anyone for those in the immediate future, but if we continue to grow the way we are then I think that will certainly be feasible.
What advice do you give to others thinking about starting or buying into business?
Be prepared to work very hard and stick at it through the tough times. When it can't get much more difficult it normally gets much better.
