Rocky road to Treatsville From a mysterious health scare to a delayed liquor licence to a freak fall blizzard to a global pandemic, things haven't been exactly smooth and chilled for the father and son behind Dug & Betty's Ice Creamery By: David Sanderson / Photography by Daniel Crump Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Friday, Jun. 5, 2020

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/06/2020 (1967 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A woman appearing to be in her 70s recently approached the takeout window at Dug & Betty’s Ice Creamery, a gourmet, small batch ice cream parlour located at 309 Des Meurons St. Ordering two scoops to go, she handed manager Juan Portillo a sealed envelope.

Portillo had already been the recipient of numerous cards and letters thanking him and Dug & Betty’s owner Fern Kirouac Jr. for keeping the shop open for takeout and delivery during these turbulent times. He politely thanked her before placing the offering on a nearby counter, figuring he’d let his boss be the first to look at it.

Kirouac, who also owns Inferno’s Bistro, located directly across the street from Dug & Betty’s, is normally a talkative sort. He was at a loss for words, however, when he opened the envelope and discovered a crisp, $100 bill inside, along with an unsigned note thanking him and his staff for their efforts dealing with the fallout from COVID-19.

“I’m the first to admit that there are more important things in life nowadays than ice cream, but to see how members of the community have supported us these last few months has been heartwarming to say the least,” Kirouac says, seated on his establishment’s fenced-in, outdoor patio which ordinarily seats 20, but is currently accommodating half that number — he jokingly instructs everybody to stay two baguettes’ length apart — as per provincial regulations.

Dug & Betty’s one-year anniversary fell late last week. Kirouac, who hasn’t enjoyed a day off since November and hasn’t drawn a salary since the beginning of March, marked the occasion by leaving work a few hours early to spend the evening with his mother Irene.

“She came over to my place and we made dinner together and split a bottle of wine,” he notes, nodding his head to the Prince song Kiss playing in the background. “She likes to bug me, saying she can’t believe after all this time I’m going to finish my career serving ice cream. Don’t worry, I tell her. I love it.”

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Kirouac, 63, has been in the restaurant biz a long time and, like they say in an amusing series of TV spots advertising insurance, knows a thing or two because he’s seen a thing or two. He was 12 years old when he began assisting his father Fern Kirouac Sr., a classically trained French chef, in the kitchen at the International Inn. He continued working for his dad after Kirouac Sr. purchased the Red Lantern steakhouse in 1980. He assumed the role of head chef at La Vieille Gare when his father bought that former St. Boniface icon, too, four years later. He opened In Ferno’s 19 years ago, eventually adding a second location (since closed) on Academy Road.

In 2015, Kirouac, a divorced father of three, bought a vacant building situated at the northwest corner of Marion Street and Des Meurons Street. He wasn’t interested in the 1,100-square-foot structure, the former home of his accountant, as much as he was the accompanying parking lot, as visitors to In Ferno’s had always been forced to park on the street. Three years ago he and his youngest son Zac, 20, were out for sushi when the topic turned to “that old building,” more specifically what the elder Kirouac intended to do with it. Zac asked if he intended to raze it or convert it into something more constructive than a glorified storage locker for In Ferno’s.

“At some point in our conversation Zac looked at me and said, ‘You know what would work great there? Ice cream,’” Kirouac says. “I’ve always loved to bake but I’d never made ice cream in my life, mostly because I never had the time. I said something back like hey, that might not be such a bad idea.”

In December 2017, the last time he took a “vacation” incidentally, Kirouac enrolled in an intense, hands-on ice cream technology course that has been offered at the University of Guelph one week out of the year since 1914. Interested parties flock there from all over the world, he discovered, some for personal reasons and others, like him, who are interested in ice cream from a business standpoint.

He picked up a portable ice cream maker the moment he returned to Winnipeg. He began experimenting with it at his home in Niakwa Park, which he shares with Zac and his two basset hounds, nine-year-old Dug — named for the pooch in the animated Pixar flick Up — and four-year-old Betty. After spending close to a year learning the ins and outs of ice cream, working on flavours as basic as vanilla and raspberry and as inspired as matcha green tea and strawberry balsamic honey, he invested close to $160,000 in commercial ice cream-making equipment. Following that, he spent just over $400,000 converting what was once Gautron Management Services into an upscale shop that serves 24 flavours of hard ice cream and sorbetto and three flavours of soft, along with a mix of shakes, parfaits and sundaes.

Dug & Betty’s, a play on ice cream conglomerate Ben & Jerry’s, opened to the public the last week of May 2019. There were a few glitches along the way, the biggest of which was the city failing to grant Kirouac a liquor licence in time for the grand opening, meaning his idea to offer beer floats or a shot with your sorbetto was put on ice for a while. That was a minor blip, mind you, compared to a few weeks later when Zac fainted without warning during a neighbourhood picnic, where he was helping his dad serve free frozen treats.

“At some point in our conversation Zac looked at me and said, ‘You know what would work great there? Ice cream.’” – Fern Kirouac

Father and son chalked it up to heat exhaustion. After all, it was 30 C the afternoon of the gathering. But when Kirouac’s middle son Chris, Dug & Betty’s first manager, raced across the street to In Ferno’s a week later and told his dad that Zac, who was also working at the ice creamery, had just passed out again, they knew they had a bigger dilemma on their hands than sun stroke.

“We spent most of last summer trying to figure out what was wrong with him, which between worrying and everything else made it incredibly tough to run a new business,” he says, noting Zac’s malady was one of the main reasons they delayed opening Dug & Betty’s indoor eating area to the public before September 2019.

“He continued to have fainting spells and we were told it could be everything from a brain tumour to a degenerative disease. Finally, after three months, a physiotherapist determined it was a pinched nerve in his neck — probably from playing soccer — and he’s been fine ever since.”

As for Dug & Betty’s, while sales were strong for the first four months, a freak, October snowstorm ground things to a halt in a hurry. It had always been Kirouac’s intention to keep the shop open year-round, but when sales continued to lag through November, often as little as $100 a day, he knew it was time to rethink his original business formula. That’s when he added comfort foods such as grilled cheese sandwiches and made-from-scratch soups to the mix.

“My dad used to tell me never to have a restaurant within a five-mile radius of your own and here I was, doing lunches at two places across the street from one another. But over here is totally different. As much as I enjoy making chicken pot pie or mac and cheese, those kind of things wouldn’t work (at In Ferno’s),” he says, mentioning the lunch business at Dug & Betty’s was just beginning to go great guns before COVID struck in mid-March.

Now that the weather is warming up and the province has relaxed some of its rules to allow indoor dining as well, Kirouac, who was forced to take out a second mortgage on his house in April in order to keep his two businesses afloat, is looking forward to things getting back to normal. Or, at least whatever counts for normal these days.

“At one point I had to lay off my entire staff including my sons, which isn’t an easy thing to do, I tell you,” he says. “But almost everybody is back — I think we’re up to 16 employees at Dug & Betty’s alone — and things are definitely going in the right direction again. The best thing about ice cream is everybody who comes here is treating themselves and is in a good mood, so even when things aren’t necessarily going your way, it’s hard to be down when you see smiles on all these faces.”

Finally, if there’s one thing Kirouac has learned since opening Dug & Betty’s that he didn’t know previously, it’s that a pair of spotted pooches with floppy ears guarantees business, every single time.

“I swear, we’ll announce on our Instagram feed that Dug and Betty are going to be here on a certain day or night, and when the three of us arrive together, there are 100 people in line, waiting to meet them,” he says. “To be honest I’m not sure what people like more, my dogs or my ice cream.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca