BDI opens shop at KP
Ice cream institution testing mall market
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This article was published 13/12/2018 (2536 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
A local ice cream institution has opened up shop in northeast Winnipeg.
On Dec. 8, Bridge Drive-In opened a new location at Kildonan Place (1555 Regent Ave. W).
“When Winnipeggers think ice cream, they think BDI,” Corey Quintaine, marketing manager at KP, said. “It’s so exciting to see the iconic red and white BDI colours in our food court.”
Justin Jacob, who grew up in northeast Winnipeg and owns BDI with his wife Jessica, said the new location made a lot of sense.
“It’s a developing area with a lot of housing going up and families moving into the area,” he said.
According to Quintaine, ice cream has been at the top of KP customer requests for the past few years.
“This area is also kind of under-serviced for ice cream,” Jacob said. “Ice cream is fun, and it adds to the ambiance of the mall, and I think a lot of people are excited that we’re here. We’re excited.”
BDI opened at its iconic 766 Jubilee Ave. location in 1951. In 1974, Jessica Jacob’s grandfather Alan Rutherford bought the business from the Savard family with a couple of partners. Eventually, Rutherford and his wife Wanda bought his partners out, and owned the shop until 2011, when Jessica and Justin bought the business.
“The first couple years we were just figuring out how everything works there,” Jacob said. “After that, we decided there was more we could do with the place, with such a good Winnipeg reputation.”
While they explored opening another location, ultimately the Jacobs decided on buying a food truck.
“There are so many events that go on throughout the summers in Winnipeg, we’re able to get to those with our truck,” Jacob said. “That’s worked out great.”
More recently, BDI opened a “pop-up” location at the University of Manitoba, which is open Monday to Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
“That model showed us that as long as there was a high volume of people in a setting with a lot of foot traffic we can succeed,” Jacob said. “That’s why we wanted to pilot a mall setting, to see if that would work.”
While Jacob admits there is a nostalgia factor to BDI’s popularity — “a lot of people have driven across the city to BDI as a young kid with their families, and now they have families of their own” — he believes it is their product that keeps people coming back for more.
“We’ve come up with some unique concoctions you can’t get anywhere else,” he said.
While The Goog remains a best-seller, Jacob added that waffle cone flavours the Saltzberg (a salted caramel concoction) and So-Much-S’More (featuring marshmallow and chocolate) are also popular. Being open through the holiday season is a first for BDI, and Jacob said they are looking to try out some new menu items.
“We’ll have gingerbread ice cream and we’re going to do a candy cane dip, stuff like that. We’re never open this time of year so it’s fun that we can play around with those things.”
Jacob added that while the new mall location is a bit of an experiment, if it is successful, he and his wife may look at taking the brand past the perimeter.
“We’d like to tweak our menu, really dial it in to capture our customers interest and see where we can go from there,” he said. “We want to make sure that menu can be applied to other markets.”
Sheldon Birnie
Community Journalist
Sheldon Birnie is a reporter/photographer for the Free Press Community Review. The author of Missing Like Teeth: An Oral History of Winnipeg Underground Rock (1990-2001), his writing has appeared in journals and online platforms across Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. A husband and father of two young children, Sheldon enjoys playing guitar and rec hockey when he can find the time. Email him at sheldon.birnie@freepress.mb.ca Call him at 204-697-7112
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Sheldon Birnie
Community Journalist
Sheldon Birnie is a reporter/photographer for the Free Press Community Review. The author of Missing Like Teeth: An Oral History of Winnipeg Underground Rock (1990-2001), his writing has appeared in journals and online platforms across Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. A husband and father of two young children, Sheldon enjoys playing guitar and rec hockey when he can find the time. Email him at sheldon.birnie@freepress.mb.ca Call him at 204-697-7112
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
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