The Product
Straus Family Creamery unveiled its Organic Plain Soft Serve Ice Cream Mix at Conecon 2026, the North American Ice Cream Association's annual trade show for frozen dessert professionals, adding a third SKU to a soft serve lineup that already includes Organic Vanilla and Organic Dutch Chocolate.
The new mix is formulated at 10% butterfat — two percentage points above the 8% butterfat in Straus' existing flavored mixes — and contains no egg yolks, a deliberate departure that widens the product's appeal to operators with allergen-sensitive menus. Made in small batches in Northern California, it combines organic nonfat milk, organic cream, organic cane sugar, and plant-based stabilizers. Sugar content runs 30% lower than the Straus Vanilla Soft Serve Mix, a spec the company says was set explicitly to leave room for operator-added sweeteners, syrups, or flavor powders such as matcha and fruit purées.
Foodservice Positioning
The launch targets the growing segment of independent scoop shops, cafés, and fast-casual restaurants seeking premium, certified-organic soft serve programs without being locked into pre-flavored bases. Jim Peck, vice president of sales at Straus Family Creamery, framed the opportunity plainly: "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."
All three Straus soft serve mixes are USDA Organic and Non-GMO Project Verified, carry no artificial flavors, colors, or preservatives, and are sold frozen in ready-to-pour 1-gallon jugs — four per case — with a 180-day shelf life. That format eliminates prep steps and reduces labor friction, a meaningful selling point for high-volume foodservice environments. Operators running batch freezers rather than soft serve machines can source Straus' separate Organic Ice Cream Base, a crème anglaise-style product at 15% butterfat made with organic cream, milk, sugar, and egg yolks.
At booth No. 228 during Conecon — running November 10–12 at the Palm Springs Convention Center — Straus is running live samples on a PASMO America soft serve machine paired with caramel from King's Cupboard, a Montana-based sauce producer, allowing operators to evaluate the mix's machine performance and flavor profile before committing to a purchase.
Why It Matters
Organic dairy remains a structurally undersupplied niche in foodservice soft serve, where most commercial mixes rely on conventional milk and synthetic stabilizers. Straus, which became the first 100% certified organic creamery in the United States when it launched in 1994, sources all milk from family farms in California's Marin and Sonoma Counties. That supply-chain provenance carries increasing weight with retail and foodservice buyers navigating consumer demand for clean-label, traceable ingredients.
The Plain mix also advances a broader strategic logic for Straus in the wholesale channel: a complete three-SKU soft serve range — neutral base, vanilla, chocolate — gives distributors and broadline operators a one-source solution for an entire frozen dessert program. For operators, the ability to build proprietary flavors on a certified-organic foundation differentiates soft serve menus at a time when premium frozen dessert formats are gaining share in foodservice. The organic dairy segment, meanwhile, continues to attract foodservice attention as operators look to align procurement with sustainability commitments, an area where Straus has committed to carbon neutrality across its supplying farms by 2030.
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.
