How do you roll up ice cream? Downtown Boise will find out soon

Casey Landry eats a lot of ice cream. Late one night, he was indulging his addiction while clicking through YouTube when he landed on a video of someone in Thailand making “ice cream rolls.”

Watching the person pour cream onto a freezing plate, chop it together with fruit, spread out the mixture into a fast-freezing ice cream pancake and methodically peel it up into rolls — it was love at first sight.

“I thought that was absolutely brilliant,” he said.

The rolled ice cream concept has popped up in larger U.S. cities over the past two years. Meridian-based Raving Rolls served the ice cream locally in 2016 but is no longer operating.

Landry plans to start serving ice cream rolls in Downtown Boise starting in June with a stand at the Capitol City Public Market on Saturdays, at a cost of $6 per bowl. In addition to the traditional ice cream, he and co-owner Angelica Campos, his girlfriend, will offer “rolls granitas,” which are made from fruit juice and fresh fruit.

Their longer-term plan is to open a storefront ice cream shop for the company, Boise City Rolls, and eventually to open franchises elsewhere in the Northwest and West Coast.

“Our goal is to be the next Cold Stone [Creamery],” Landry said.

Landry’s background is in retail, including managing at Cheesecake Factory and Alpaca Pete’s stores and operating Stop Assaults Security Products in Caldwell.

Their initial investment in preparing to sell this summer is between $5,000 to $7,000. They are seeking about $10,000 in financing to open the storefront.

Landry said they are committed to using local products, including ingredients from other farmers market vendors. Landry is working with a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning technician to engineer their own freezing plate, because the only plates on the market now are made in China.

While they work on that plate, they are testing recipes at home with a setup of dry ice and kitchen pans.

Boise City Rolls is booking events starting this summer. For information, contact the company through its Facebook page or email boisecityrolls@gmail.com.

This story was originally published March 3, 2017 at 2:08 PM with the headline "How do you roll up ice cream? Downtown Boise will find out soon."