Churning out Frozen Delights at Mayday Ice Cream: An Interview with Chris Fair

By Lauren Titus / Photography By Amy Robb | April 08, 2019

Mayday offers handcrafted ice cream in a rainbow of flavors and colors.

Several years after launching The Hyppo Gourmet Ice Pops, a successful popsicle business that started in St. Augustine, owner Stephen DiMare set his sights on mastering another frozen treat: ice cream. He opened Mayday, an artisanal ice cream shop in 2018, and visitors were immediately smitten with flavors like Parent Trap (peanut butter filled with Oreo cookies), Strawberry Fields (strawberry with St. Germain elderflower liqueur) and Raja Honey (jasmine green tea with local honey). What does it take to create and produce innovative flavor combinations, along with homemade sprinkles and waffle cones? To find out, we caught up with Chris Fair, Mayday's production manager. Also known as chief ice cream maker, Fair helps with flavor conception and recipe design, as well as the production of all the ice cream sold in all three of the ice cream shops in Northeast Florida.

What is your background? How did you get started making ice cream? How do you come up with flavors?

As you know, Mayday is a sister company of The Hyppo, and I’ve been with The Hyppo for six years now in different capacities. Most recently I was involved on our ice pop production team. When our CEO Stephen DiMare started Mayday last year, he designed the original menu with Shara Gamble, a talented pastry chef from our pops team. After the original concepts were hammered out I was brought in to help finish the task of flavor creation and streamline our production process.

Our goal at Mayday is to really push the envelope with our flavors. Whether that means an overhaul of a classic, or creating something people may not normally associate with ice cream, we always want to leave our customers feeling like they just experienced the best ice cream of their lives.

What has been the most challenging aspect of creating ice cream flavors? Any surprises during the process?

One of the biggest challenges for me is pacing myself. What I mean by that is that sometimes I get carried away and want to make tons of new flavors all at once. I have to slow myself down and let people enjoy flavors for a bit before introducing them to something new. The great thing is that at Mayday, we have a very creative team of people involved in flavor creation, so there no lacking in ideas.

One surprising aspect of creating ice cream has been just how good a vehicle ice cream is for flavor. After working with pops for years, translating the fresh fruits into textures and flavors, it’s really a treat to start out each new batch of ice cream with a base of delicious fats and sugars. Porting flavor ideas into the cream is definitely one of the many magical and rewarding parts of making ice cream.

What has been the most popular flavor? What is your personal favorite?

Well people love a lot of the classics so Cookie Crush has been really popular, but also flavors like Coffee+Donuts and Parent Trap (peanut butter ice cream with Oreos).

My personal favorite though would have to be our Triple Vanilla – in a day where sourcing true vanilla has been made so much more costly due to the global shortage, I think this draws us back to look at vanilla anew and really appreciate it. Far from being “plain vanilla,” we can experience its deep and alluring floral notes that make it one of the titans of flavor. I’m also really excited by some of the new flavors we are working on that haven’t made it to the public yet.

What kind of partnerships do you have with other businesses (such as the donuts and coffee used in one of the flavors)?

We love supporting other business in the community and try to do so as much as possible. We use Kookaburra Coffee and Fiction Donuts, both made in St Augustine, for our Coffee+Donuts ice cream. We are also working on collaborations with Bold Bean Coffee Roasters, Madi Rum and Congaree and Penn which we hope to have available by summer.

Ready to try some of Mayday's frozen delights? Visit their website for locations and hours of each of their three shops.