Subreddit: r/SmallBusiness
User: u/Fun-Tumbleweed-2389
Original Post:
Question About Modifying Store-Bought Ice Cream for Resale
Hi Reddit!
I’m exploring a small business idea in the food space and could use some advice or insights.
My plan is to buy store-bought ice cream, mix it with protein powder (and possibly other ingredients), then package and sell it as a high-protein dessert under my own brand.
However, I’m unsure about the legal side of things. Would this count as “heavily modifying” the product enough to rebrand and resell it without legal issues?
If anyone here has experience in food entrepreneurship or legal knowledge about modifying and reselling food products, I’d love your thoughts. Thanks in advance!
My Response:
Food scientist here who consults for small and medium-sized (SME) food brands.
So theoretically you can do this, however, something to consider is that once you've unsealed the product, you are now liable for the food safety regulations involved.
That means that any introduced contamination is now your liability. In a scenario where this product is marketable and makes sense as a business, you would have to re-pasteurize the product and re-churn after introducing the additional ingredients due to the presence of potential pathogens and microorganisms that are in the protein powder and new additives.
These respond differently to a new food matrix, so their growth is going to change now that they're in a high-nutrient, high-moisture environment (ice cream). Dairy products are very challenging to get right when it comes to food safety, and pasteurization can be a mess if you don't understand the process well. As someone who spent time in the dairy industry, it can be expensive to do if your production is not scaled properly.
As other commenters have pointed it, this doesn't make sense to do especially if you're not certain how the protein powder and other ingredients will impact the flavor, texture, and shelf-life quality of the product. For what it's worth, it takes quite a bit of time and research and development to design many of these products. High-protein ice creams are very challenging to construct because of the impact that protein has on the microstructure of the ice cream, which can nucleate ice crystal formation and create a poor-quality product.
You could do this in a small storefront, and the only issue you'd run into is if the food brand caught wind and cared to force you to pay for a licensing fee for their brand. But in most cases, if you're too small, they probably won't care.
That being said, it is best that you contract a co-manufacturer to just produce the product in the first place if you wanted to get into retail. The amount of regulatory headache, especially for ice cream and other dairy products due to these pasteurization requirements, can make the venture quite unprofitable.
Again, that's assuming your additives actually create a good product. I highly doubt that will be the case, as I have designed high-protein ice cream in the past. Besides ice crystal formation and texture changes, you will also run into the challenge of flavoring the ice cream. Most flavors are designed to work well with dairy protein at the concentration used in ice cream and to overcompensate for the fact that cold temperatures inhibit our perception of flavor. Protein is very good at absorbing and binding flavors, so you will need to add an overage of the appropriate flavor to compensate for this; flavors that are resistant to this effect are not easy to come by and I only know a handful of flavor companies that produce them.
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