Manhattan is a city known worldwide for its amazing shops, food, and attractions, including the Chrysler and Empire State buildings. Food and small businesses enrich the streets of the city, and Oddfellows Ice Cream Company, is one of those small businesses. Manhattan is filled to the brim with eateries, bakeries, and specialty shops, so there is an ocean of competition. Oddfellows Ice Cream Company has a sweet backstory, allowing them to stand out from the crowd more than others.

What Is the History of Oddfellows Ice Cream?

Sam Mason, Holiday Kumar, and Mohan Kumar are the three co-owners of Oddfellows ice cream, in Manhattan, New York. Holiday and Mohan are a married couple, and for many married couples, having children is a common goal. It often goes like this, with some variation between couples: Step one: Own a car. Step two: Establish your careers (if they have not been established already.) Step three: Pick and buy a house. Step Four: Live life to the fullest! The final step: children.

On Holiday and Mohan Kumar’s journey through life, Holiday became pregnant, and like most pregnant women, had strange cravings. Mohan Kumar was a close friend of Sam Mason, a pastry chef who was leveling his way through the baking industry. Mohan, while telling Sam about his wife’s cravings, inspired the pastry chef to create something. Days later, he arrived at Mohan and Holiday’s home with a pretzel ice cream, hoping to soothe some cravings. Holiday loved it, all of it, and her compliments inspired the pair to sell the ice cream. Thus Oddfellows Ice Cream was born!  

Oddfellows pasteurizes their ice cream base in-house and uses only the freshest, locally sourced, additive- and hormone-free dairy products. Pasteurizing their ice cream base on site allows for exquisite quality and flavor control, but it can be time-consuming. This offers the greatest product quality payout, and the flavor profiles of the ice cream can be layered, and intricate.

Along with great ice cream, the brand makes a point of giving back to the community. They perform charity work, giving a portion of their sales to the New York City food bank!

TASTY MENU ITEMS

Every shop focuses on its unique qualities. For this ice cream store, it’s the flavors of ice cream. Here are a few interesting flavors Oddfellows Ice Cream Company has to offer:

• 1Miso Cherry (A miso soup and cherry flavor)
• 2Extra Virgin Olive Oil (Extra Virgin Olive Oil is an oil that has never been used, and has a fruity and aromatic flavor)
• 3Black Chocolate Stout (a dark chocolate flavor blended with Stout beer. Stout is a dark beer.)
• 4Avocado (that’s right! Avocado ice cream!)
• 5Caramelized Onion (onion that has been caramelized in a frying pan, sometimes with the added help of sugar.)

Ice Cream

• 1Butternut Squash
• 2Raspberry Pink Peppercorn (peppercorns are ground to make table-side pepper)
• 3Hibiscus Lemon (hibiscus is a flower, otherwise known as Rosemallows)
• 4Grapefruit Jalapeno (Grapefruit, being a citrus fruit, is paired with the spicy Jalapeno pepper)
• 5Strawberry Lavender (Lavender is typically used for its soothing and relaxing capabilities)

Sorbet

Don’t worry! They offer simpler flavors like Triple Chocolate, Strawberry, and Pistachio, for the more cautious. Along with so many interesting flavors, Oddfellow also sells their ice cream by the pint, and offers party packages.

• All pints of ice cream cost $12
• If you are in store, a milkshake costs $8.50
• The brand does not currently offer nationwide shipping of its products, but the owners are working on it
• Oddfellows offers local shipping of their ice cream; delivery is made via Caviar to most of Brooklyn and Manhattan
• You can also order their ice cream on Grubhub and Seamless if Caviar is unavailable

Prices

Party Packages

Oddfellows offers both Little Kid Party Packages, and Big Kid Party Packages, so everyone can party! Here is the information as well as the pricing of these party packages:

Little Kid Parties: $495.00

• Private use of the shop, between 10 am and 12 pm

• All you can eat sugar cones, ice cream, and waffle cones

• A build your own sundae bar! (Don’t worry, they scoop the ice cream! You just put on the toppings)

This price covers up to 25 people. Additional people will cost extra. However, if your party is small, contact them for pricing.

Big Kid Parties: (BYOB) $585.00

As with the kid’s package:

• Private use of the shop, between 10 am and 12 pm

• All you can eat sugar cones, ice cream, and waffle cones

• A build your own sundae bar! (Don’t worry, they still will scoop the ice cream. Toppings are free reign)

More Big Kids Goodies

• Bring your own beer and related items 

• The shop can make you boozy ice creams, at your request

• You can have your party from 10pm-12am, depending on the season

This price covers up to 25 people. Additional people will cost extra. Again, if your party is small, you can contact them for pricing. For both packages, decorations you bring from home are welcome.

Oddfellows Ice Cream has three current locations and is opening up two more. If you don’t live close to their main location, don’t worry! You can find their products in the following locations (this list is not complete):

• Cafe Dante in Greenwich Village
• Food Kick which is an online delivery service to Manhattan and Brooklyn
• Whole Foods in Williamsburg and Bryant Park
• Freehold in Williamsburg
• Campbells Grocery in Williamsburg

Oddfellow Ice Cream vs Other Brands

With any small business, prices are going to be higher than the robotic, factory produced ice creams. They are handled with care and attended to by real people who care deeply for their product quality. To keep the comparison fair, here are two other, small ice cream businesses, that have roots in Manhattan, New York. 

Ample Hills Creamery

• Hormone-free milk and cream from grass-fed cows
• Interesting flavor selection, including a pretzel-based ice cream
• Pasteurize their ice cream base on site
• Registered as a dairy plant
• They make all of their ice cream mix-ins in-house
• A 4 pack of ice cream pints is $55.00
• They offer nationwide shipping of their ice cream; the price of 4 pints is $55.00
• Ample Hills Creamery has 9 locations in New York, alone!
• They do charity work and a portion of all of their ice cream pint sales is donated to their charity house of the month
• Offers a range of ice cream making classes

Morgenstern’s Finest Ice Cream

• Offers flavors like Cinnamon Whiskey, Blueberry Milk Chocolate, and Coffee Crisp
• They offer shipping, locally and nationwide, of their products
• Pasteurize their ice cream base on site
• Four pints of ice cream costs $80 via FoodyDirect
• Charity work this holiday season with the Ali Forney Center. This season, if you purchase one of their strawberry sweatshirts, Morgenstern’s will give a sweatshirt to an LGBTQ+ homeless person, to keep them warm during the chilly months (when they sleep outside)
• Caters weddings
• Nationwide Shipping Price of 4 pints: $80.00

Comparison

All the businesses take pride in their flavor profiles, their quality ingredients, and all the companies pasteurize their ice cream bases on site, allowing for ultimate quality control. All the shops offer some kind of local shipping, but Oddfellows is the only one that does not offer national shipping.

The prices per pint of ice cream are as follows:

• Oddfellows: $12
• Ample Hills: The only prices available on their website were the national shipping prices of FOUR pints, which is $55.00
• Morgensterns: $11.50

The great thing is that all the businesses perform charity work whether year round or seasonally.

Conclusion

Oddfellows Ice Cream is a strong competitor when lined up against similar small businesses. It performs charity work, as most other small shops do, allows for local delivery, though not national, and pasteurizes its ice cream base on site. Though their ice cream pints are $12, Morgensterns beats them at a fifty cent lower price! (We cannot compare the pint price of Ample Hills.) 

When comparing the range of flavors, Oddfellows Ice Cream has many more than its competitors.

When comparing the prices of shipping of the two other businesses, Ample Hills Creamery is a whopping $25 cheaper than Morgenstern’s, for four pints. If Oddfellows Ice Cream is looking to compete on that front, a price lower than Ample Hills Creamery or a price in between Ample Hills and Morgenstern’s will likely be required.

If you are interested in learning more about Oddfellows, here are its three main locations, and their contact information:

• 175 Kent Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, 11249, (347-599-0556)

• 75 East 4th Street, New York, New York, 10003, (917-599-0556)

• 55 East Houston Street, New York, New York, 10012, (646-756-4377)

Visit Oddfellows Ice Cream Company at their website, as well: https://www.oddfellowsnyc.com/

Overall, Oddfellows Ice Cream offers great party packages, and its two listed competitors offer different services. Ample Hills Creamery offers ice cream making classes, while Morgensterns offers to cater weddings, giving the company a more sophisticated reputation.