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Community Corner

Market Watch: "The Best Sorbet You Can Possibly Find"

Each week we'll feature a vendor from Albany's farmers market. Click the green "Keep me posted!" button below to get alerts when we write about sustainable issues in Albany.

Albany Patch takes a look at the people behind the Albany farmers market. Tom Hardin from Oakland says one of his favorite outlandish sorbet flavors is macadamia ginger - a combination that whipped up this summer. 

Where is Scream Sorbet based?

We’re based out of Oakland and we’ve been around the farmers markets for a few years now. Basically we got started as an idea of taking all this amazing produce we find at the farmers market and making something delicious with it, and bringing it back to sell at the farmers markets.

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What flavors are people into?

You can never tell. Our last customer swears that cucumber mint is the best flavor of all time. It’s definitely not something that the masses would say, oh, that is the best flavor. But you do have people tending to like a lot of different things and they taste these combinations that they’ve never had before. They really do love them. Beet lemon I would say is our worst flavor. But I do have people that swear by it and will come by and ask if we have that and don’t want anything else but the beet lemon just because it’s something totally unexpected.

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Are there certain flavors you bring to the Albany farmers market?

It’s actually always different because we basically concentrate on whatever is fresh and in season. All of our stuff is made from local organic produce, even the macadamia nuts. We found a farm in California that grows them, down near San Diego. So really you’ll never know what you’re going to find out here, just whatever’s good. We have a few standard flavors that we can usually keep, like the pistachio is pretty much our flagship. As you can see that’s what people have been buying the most of out here. I have customers who just come by to see if we have pistachio and nothing else. But we also keep it interesting and unexpected, with flavors you wouldn’t usually think of in sorbet. We try to come up with very different combinations, like coconut Thai basil is one of our classic flavors. We do lots of herbal flavors where you throw whole herbs in like lemon sage and mint, really interesting things like that.

How’s it going so far at Albany's farmers market?

It’s actually been really good for us. It’s a perfect community for the farmers market. You have lots of regular customers that come back every week and know that we have a lot of good stuff out here so you do see a lot of good steady business. Even though it’s one of the smaller farmers markets around, we do a lot of good business. 

My role, I kind of take on every role in the company, as a lot of us do. We’re a little cooperative in that respect. We have lots of people who are making the stuff in the kitchen a couple days a week and coming out to the farmers markets to sell it and holding down the store occasionally, so basically everybody’s got similar roles.

What are your prices?

We usually do petite scoops for $3, double scoops for $5 and then we have 12 ounce containers for $8 for some of the flavors. Some of the flavors are a little more expensive to produce so we charge $10 for those.

Do people shy away from the prices?

People generally do. They think it’s a little pricey for a sorbet, especially when you talk about ice cream, which is generally a quarter of the price of what we usually do. But we find that a lot of people really do appreciate what goes into making this stuff and how it is really different than any other ice cream in that it’s all dairy-free and using very unique processes, and of course uses all the amazing produce that we can find. It’s basically the best sorbet you can possibly find. 

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