Here’s the scoop: CounterspaceBR owner Sarah Joy Hays has a sweet new gig, working with New Orleans-born Gail’s Fine Ice Cream as its director of creativity and quality control. Expect fresh flavors with her bakery favorites mixed in, like Carnival Cake—a sweet cream base with cream cheese chips, cinnamon and hunks of CounterspaceBR’s beloved king cake.
Hays started her job with Gail’s, part of the Hufft Marchand Hospitality group, in December. In this role, she aims to bring some inventive ideas to the ice cream shop, which has a location in the Perkins Road Overpass District as well as a New Orleans shop. She’ll think up modern flavors and reimagine classics while also checking in on the ice cream-making process and conducting staff meetings.
Gail’s has been keeping Hays busy—but don’t worry, CounterspaceBR fans. She’s still firing at all cylinders over at the bakery. She credits her hardworking team at CounterspaceBR and the employees at Gail’s for helping her make time to give herself creatively to both brands. And it helps, too, that the ice cream shop’s slower winter season is in tandem with the bakery’s busy king cake production.
|
|
|
The collab came about when Hays was approached by co-owner Nick Hufft in November. Hays says Hufft was looking for a fresh way to keep Gail’s relevant and kept landing on her name thanks to Counterspace’s reputation for originality. They set up multiple meetings and eventually came up with the title of director of creativity and quality control for Gail’s. This role also means Hays is now part of the leadership team for the Hufft Marchand Hospitality Group.
“I love a good collaboration,” Hays says. “So much of the business that we’ve built with Counterspace is from working with other small businesses and local groups. … This just felt like an extension of what our core values are, and it just made sense. We dabbled with ice cream during the pandemic and had fun with that. This is just a really fun extension, and it gives me some little creative space to think through and scratch that itch that I have in my brain to be thinking of new things.”
The team over at Hufft Marchand is equally excited to join forces with Hays.
“Sarah Joy brings so much to the table with her talent and creative outlook on ice cream,” co-owner Lon Marchand said in a press release. “It’s an opportunity to make some really fun things happen in our ice cream world, and we are very excited about the future of Gail’s.”
Hays has already hit the ground running and added her own CounterspaceBR twist to new and old scoops. She says she visits the Gail’s commissary kitchen in greater New Orleans about every week-and-a-half to oversee production and experiment with ingredients.
One of the new flavors, Unicorn Bar, uses almond extract, sprinkles and bits of the bakery’s Unicorn Bar treats.
“I just have to get in the kitchen and see what will work with the ice cream base they use,” Hays says. “That’s a fun thing. Ice cream base is really versatile. You can bring a lot to it. But I also make sure that my ideas will work. So, hopefully we’ll have some flavors to tease within the next couple of weeks.”
Hays will also add her own twist to case classics—so far, she’s introduced CounterspaceBR’s fan-favorite salted chocolate chip cookie pieces to tubs of Gail’s staple Milk & Cookies. Watch for her spins on seasonal flavors, too. And, she has some other ideas up her sleeve.
“I would really love to work out something with our cinnamon roll outside of king cake season,” she says. “I would really love to get a Champagne flavor. Our Champagne cake used to be super popular. We kind of rolled it off the menu, just because it is a little bit more complicated to make. But I think that figuring out some sort of sparkly Champagne flavor and having kind of a grown-up ice cream would be fun too.”
Since debuting three new flavors in the case, Hays says they have been well received by both CounterspaceBR fans and Gail’s regulars. These scoops have been selling well, and some tubs have even sold out before the shop’s restock from the commissary kitchen.
And these CounterspaceBR-filled scoops aren’t exclusive to Baton Rouge. They’re in the case at Gail’s storefront in New Orleans, too. Hays says she’s already received positive and excited feedback from her bakery’s fans who live in the Crescent City.
|
|
|
Up next: Hays says baked goods could make an appearance on the menu at the ice cream shop in the future—ice cream sandwiches made with her sprinkle cookies and salted chocolate chip cookies might be on the way, she teases. She even wants to collaborate with nearby Perkins Overpass restaurants to create unique flavors specific to the eateries for their dessert menus.
“It’s nice to have an opportunity to grow in what I do outside of the walls of Counterspace,” Hays says. “To have a new challenge, to have something that’s outside of myself and outside of what I have to build. And it’s really nice to step into an established restaurant group and see how they run things. I’m already learning about how I can do things better and differently with my own business, just from how they operate their group. And that’s been really good for me, too.”
Want to get a taste of Hays’ collab with Gail’s? Head into the Baton Rouge ice cream shop at 3025 Perkins Road to get a scoop—or two. Gail’s is open Monday-Thursday, 3-9 p.m.; Friday, 3-10 p.m.; Saturday, noon-10 p.m.; and Sunday, noon-9 p.m. Find more info here.