Kitchen 242 smelled of raspberries and basil while spending time with Benjamin and Courtney Thackrey and talking with them about their recently launched gourmet ice pop business. They were producing Raspberry Basil Ice Pops, one of ten flavors they offer. Ben always wanted to start and own his own business. After spending five years in the U.S. Marine Corp and moving around numerous times, a career move as an air traffic controller at the Muskegon County Airport brought them to settle in Fruitport. Ben originally from Florida and Courtney from Alabama have never lived this far north before, they felt a warm welcome and quickly adapted to the making this home and decided that now finally was a good time to focus on starting a business. Courtney has a full-time career also and works as a supervising manager at a clothing store in downtown Grand Haven. 
Why ice pops? They had experienced gourmet ice pops in the south and when they came to West Michigan they saw how many ice cream shops there were. After looking around Michigan however, there were no ice pops shops which is a great alternative to ice cream. 
We asked them about their challenges of starting up a new business and there were two: going through the process of obtaining their food license. Their product has some dairy, but frozen so they did not necessarily fall under the dairy category according to the Michigan Department of Agricultural. Ben and Courtney both read the food law and expressed the importance of how that helped them have those conversations with MDARD and Muskegon County Health Department who ended up meeting to decide where Summer Pops would fall. The food licensing process took about seven months. During that time however, they were able to purchase equipment, experiment with recipes and apply to and get accepted in to the Grand Haven Coast Guard Festival. 
The second challenge came with developing recipes and how they needed to adjust ingredients because a combination of ingredients may act differently together after being frozen, taste differently as well. While developing recipes they had to keep track every step of the way so when they made adjustments to 
ingredients they knew exactly what they had done. Many friends and co-workers helped them taste test product along the journey. They perfected and currently have 10 flavors with a list of about 20 – 30 more suggestions. Some of their more popular and unique flavors are: Raspberry Basil, Strawberry Lemonade, Cheesecake with Graham Cracker Crumbles, Blueberries & Cream, and Sweet Buttermilk.
Ben and Courtney decided early on that they did not want to sell wholesale immediately. They are determined to personally sell direct to customers, gather feedback, suggestions and perhaps someday sell wholesale. They also have a goal to locally source their ingredients and currently they are purchasing fruit from Peterson Farms in Shelby, Michigan. Ben laughed as he said “I’m the only person that pulls up at Peterson Farms in his pick-up truck to purchase one bucket of fruit”.
You will find them at the Grand Haven Coast Guard Festival this summer (this week in fact) and they are going to be located right in front of the popular Pronto Pup on S. Harbor Dr. starting Tuesday, August 1st. We asked what their strategy was to prepare for Coast Guard, how do you know how many to prepare for the demand you may have with a festival that large? With attendance at Coast Guard Festival approximately 350,000, they are preparing to sell to 5% of those patrons through research they had done online and talking with other vendors. That is 17,500 ice pops. They have been in Kitchen 242 for a few weeks now producing and freezing ice pops! 
Gourmet Ice Pops are a great alternative to ice cream and we are certain you will enjoy. They are moving at a very fast pace and are working on other ways to find them but for you now you can find them on Instagram
Welcome Benjamin and Courtney to Kitchen 242