You'll never guess London Ice Cream Co.'s most popular flavour

New Wave Ice Cream is one of the largest independent ice cream producers in southwestern Ontario.

Founded in 1994 by Alan Sargant, the company's products are now available coast to coast, under the in-house brands of London Ice Cream Company and Country Boy, as well as private labels that comprise a large part of the business.

According to sales and marketing manager Abbi Lezizidis, working there is a bit like being a rock star.

"If you tell people you work at an ice cream company, eyes light up. It's incredible what those two words do for people," he said. "When you say the word ice cream, people smile — subconsciously smile — no one ever frowns."

During the busy season, which is right about now, up to 100 people work for the company, producing 700 tubs of ice cream a day. 

London plant manager Karen Minielly said a typical day starts at 4 a.m. and ends around 1 a.m. 

Minielly said while the process of how they make their ice cream hasn't changed much over her two decades in the plant, the flavours she has to come up with certainly have.

"The millennials are a crazy bunch," she said with a laugh. "They seem to like the odd flavours ... like the green tea and the black sesame and they like natural fruity things."

Best seller: It's not vanilla — or chocolate

When asked what their best-selling flavour is, the answer isn't vanilla, or even chocolate: it's mango.

"[It happened] over the last couple of years," Minielly said. "Mango just sort of picked up and took off."

Lezizidis said people in London tend to be very traditional, gravitating toward classic sweet and salty flavours such as maple walnut and butter pecan. In the rural area around Chatham, London and Woodstock, speculoos — named after a dutch cookie — is popular, likely due to the large Dutch farming community in the area.

And in Windsor, chocolate monkey, a mix of banana and chocolate, and grapevine, which tastes like purple grapes, are popular.

While Lezizidis can't explain the popularity of chocolate monkey in the Rose City, he does have a theory about grape.

"About thirty years, forty years ago there was a fellow that just made grape ice cream on Ouellette [Avenue] in Windsor and that's all he did," he said. "That's perhaps why it's been so deep rooted in the generations."

Making a batch of ice cream

After the base is homogenized, it is pumped into tanks. If the ice cream is destined to become soft serve, the liquid is simply bagged and boxed.

For hard — scoopable — ice cream, the base is pumped into a giant ice cream maker, which adds air, producing a product that looks like whipped cream.

Every tub is hand filled.

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London Ice Cream Company products are available at parlours and retail stores across southwestern Ontario. The factory scoop shop is at 43 Base Line Rd. W. in London.