by Andrew Morrison | Two young entrepreneurs, brothers Dan and Ken Kim, have taken over 25 Alexander Street, a 1,000 sqft former architecture/design office in the old BC Market Company Building in Gastown. With it, they plan to open Soft Peaks, an organic soft serve ice cream shop, this Friday, January 16th.
Dan and Kim come to the trade from careers in the finance and forestry industries (respectively). They took possession of the space – which to my knowledge has never had an food/beverage tenant – back in October, but they’ve been fiddling with ice cream for years; refining, testing, and hunting for a combination of ingredients that they could both agree on.
As a base, the pair settled on milk from BC’s own certified organic Avalon Dairy, which makes an ice cream containing less than 6% fat, as opposed to the usual 15% to 17% found in typical soft serve. The result isn’t nearly as sweet as, say, the stuff one gets at Dairy Queen, and they’ve balanced that lack of sweetness with toppings such as local honeycomb, yuzu, TimTam cookies with chocolate sauce, toasted coconut with caramel or chocolate, organic matcha with red bean or mochi, and Himalayan pink salt with your choice of caramel, chocolate, or organic maple syrup. Prices range from $4.75 to $6.75 per serving. Expected hours of operation are 11:30am until late, Tuesday through Sunday (closed Mondays).