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The Men’s Issue
As you can see, we pared down this issue a few pages for the summer months, but each page is bursting with inspiring and entertaining content.
We’re thrilled to feature Gabriel Luna on the cover. When Gabriel went to Crockett High School (where he dated an Austinite who’s also been featured on an Austin Lifestyle cover!), he was more likely to be an athlete than an actor. An injury and series of events led to a theater scholarship at St. Edwards University – and the rest is history. His star is soaring high with a starring role in the The Last of Us, which recently aired the season finale for Season 2, and he’s currently in Toronto filming The Terminal List opposite Chris Pratt. When not on location, or in LA with wife Smaranda, who he met doing a play when she was a graduate student at UT, he says he still finds his way ‘back home’ to Austin three or four times a year to see his family and visit some of his favorite places, which he shared with us.
We also caught up with Spencer McManes, the founder of functional beverage Kaviva – who got engaged earlier this year to another former Austin Lifestyle cover star, Gabby Thomas! He tells us about the beverage and the engagement.
Austin’s recently seen some high-fashion events come to the city and we share Pucci’s collaboration with Mytheresa which they celebrated at Austin Hotel and photos from Mack, Jack & McConaughey’s annual most fashionable luncheon where Neiman Marcus presented a show by Carolina Herrera to benefit charities that empower children. We also share a look inside The Kindness Campaign’s Art of Kindness Gala – celebrating 10 years since the non-profite was created by founder Andra Liemandt, have Brandy Fons of Fons PR’s summer movie to see and Lick Honest Ice Creams’ seasonal flavors not to miss.
1: Lucky Robot was among the 30 top Austin restaurants that served up perfectly decadent bites 2: Biddy Up led the live auction at the "A Night in the Enchanted Gardens" themed celebration 3: UMLAUF Garden Party Co-Chairs Jonathon Todd and Dale Huggins with the evening's emcee Lauren Petrowski
JUSTIN LEITNER FOR UMLAUF
1: Aaron Alexander 2: Meadow Walker in the Pucci x Mytheresa capsule collection designed by Camille Miceli 3: The exclusive party held at the Austin Motel had custom cowboy hats and two-stepping with Beth Coffee 4: Alton Mason and Charles Omenihu in the Pucci, available on Mythersa.com Photography by Shane Drummond/BFA.com
The Art OF KINDNESS
The Kindness Campaign celebrated 10 Years as a nonprofit at the Art of Kindness Gala presented by BK Beauty April 10 at PBS Studios.
Chris Harrison and Lauren Zima served as Masters of Ceremonies, Stephanie Coultress O’Neill and Todd O’Neill co-chaired and AndyB sang. Kevin Hines was a surprise featured speaker and the audience was captivated as he shared his story. The Cowboy Auctioneers helped to raise $600,000 auctioning packages including private dinners prepared by award-winning chefs Paul Qui and Philip Speer, who were in attendance, and a designer outfit and experience from designer Jonathan Simkhai to support the nonprofit Andra Liemandt founded a decade ago, inspired by her daughters, to provide mental health tools to children. So far, they’ve served over 300,000 children, and the momentum is just gaining steam.
On April 12, TKC capped an extraordinary week with its annual Community Day. Emceed by Melissa Baker and her son Jace, the event brought the city together for art, activities, and a celebration of kindness at Branch Park Pavilion in Mueller.
PHOTOGRAPHY
BY
BEN PORTER
Lauren Zima, Melissa Reidhead, Kelly Green, Andra Liemandt, Haley Brunning, Christy Carlson Romano and Anjou Ahlborn Kay/Ben Porter
TKC lit up PBS Austin
Chris Harrison, Lauren Zima, Andra, Stephanie Coultress O'Neill and Todd O'Neill
Luis and Liliana Patino/Ben Porter
Chris Harrison, Kevin Hines and Lauren Zima
Andra at Community Day/ Ben Porter
MJ&M DOES IT AGAIN
Mack, Jack & McConaughey (MJ&M) is an annual multi-day joint fundraising effort of Academy Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey, ACM Awardwinning recording artist Jack Ingram, and coaching legend Mack Brown to give back to the community via organizations that support children’s education, health and wellness.
This year’s two-day event featured a gala, where Eric Church performed, a golf tournament at Barton Creek Fazio Canyons that took place at the same time as a luncheon with a Carolina Herrera runway show presented by Neiman Marcus at Omni Barton Creek and concluded with the Jack & Friends concert at ACL Live that featured a performance by Miranda Lambert. They all benefited five non-profit organizations that empower kids: CureDuchenne, Dell Children’s. HeartGift, just keep livin’ Foundation and The Rise School.
Matthew and Camila McConaughey with Miranda Lambert and Brendan McLoughlin/Tyler Schmitt
Photo by Tyler Schmitt
Mack, Jack and McConaughey/Tyler Schmitt
The goal of MJ&M is to Empower Kids/Tyler Schmitt
Eric Church peformed at the gala
Neiman Marcus Presents Carolina Herrerra fashion show/Tyler Schmitt
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ARTICLE BY JENNIFER BIRN | PHOTOGRAPHY BY COLIN HUTTON
Gabriel Still Calls Austin Home
THE
LAST
OF
US STAR IS STILL ONE OF US - HIS STAR FLIES HIGH, BUT AUSTIN KEEPS HIM GROUNDED
A majority of those reading this recently finished watching Gabriel Luna’s action-packed performance in Season 2 of HBO’s The Last of Us. Meanwhile, the Austin-native has been in Toronto since May filming The Terminal List with Chris Pratt where he portrays a former Navy Seal currently in the CIA. It’s a long way from Crockett High School, where Gabriel excelled at football, making the varsity team as a sophomore, but having his athletic scholarship dreams dashed by an injury his senior year. A series of events, including a VHS tape of his father, would lead him to audition for a play that consequently led to a theatre scholarship close to home at St. Edward’s University instead.
Today Gabriel’s career keeps him from ever being in one place for a long time and though he now also has a foot in Los Angeles, his heart is still here in Austin. It’s the place where he met his wife Smaranda while they did a play together in Austin while she was getting a graduate degree at The University of Texas, the place he still calls home and returns to several times a year.
It’s like my grandpa used to say, when this kind of stuff happens, when you keep bumping into the same people, you see somebody that you grew up with in Paris or on a random street or something, it’s where you’re supposed to be, exactly supposed to be.
Austin Lifestyle had a chat with Gabriel where he rehashed the past, discussed the present and gave us all his Austin recommedations. We also learned his high school girlfriend was someone who’s also been in these pages. It was….well, keep reading.
How did you get into acting being from Austin?
I was born and raised in Austin and went to Crockett High School.
My mother was very young when she had me, and my father passed before I was born. My mother was a 15-year-old widow, so my primary focus was to work really hard so that when it came time to go to college it would be as free as possible.
I was a very strong athlete and football was my specialty and an avenue for me to possibly get a free education. In my senior year I was offered a few scholarships to some lesser D1 programs and I was kind of compromising a little bit with schools that weren’t the greatest academic institutions, but it was a free education, so I was going do it. Then I dislocated my shoulder twice my senior year, I couldn’t play football and I lost my scholarships. Thankfully, at the time I was in a tech theater class building sets to get my fine arts credit. When they told me I could swing a hammer to get my fine arts credit I thought it was great. I love to sing and draw and I did all those things, but at the time, I didn’t want anyone telling me how, or seeing me do any of those things, so this was a great fit for me and a lot of other jocks were in the class.
We read a play to study how set design could help the actors tell the story by what we built and our teacher, Mr.Sharp, heard me read, thought I was really good and asked if I wanted to try out for the play they were doing at the time. I respectfully declined and said I had to go to practice. He asked why I was investing the time when I was injured.
After I declined, I went to my grandmother’s, and she had a box of items that belonged to my father. I was very excited because I always tried to gather as much information as I could about who he was and what he was like. So I went there, recovered the box, and there was a bunch of trophies he had won and yearbooks, which were really cool because I could see him through the eyes of his peers and the messages in the back of the yearbook. And then, there was a VHS of my father from a play that he wrote, starred in and directed from church for Easter. It felt like kind of a sense of inheritance, and as I collected myself and stop crying, I decided I would go tell Mr. Sharp I was going to try out. So, I went to the theater room to do it and was the only weird outsider there in my Crockett Cougars football
jacket amongst all the theater kids who were really, really cool and self-assured, and who could just be themselves, which is what I first clocked about these folks. I clock this other really pretty girl in the corner, who would become kind of my high school sweetheart at the end of my high school tenure, another Austinite, Adriene Mishler, who you may know as Yoga with Adriene. We went to high school together and in the scene the main character stands next to a woman asking which one of the two unmarked graves at his feet belongs to his father. I remember thinking, to this day it was probably the most profound lessons I’ve ever learned about acting, which is to live a full life so when you get there, you don’t have to fake it. So I stood there and thought to myself, I’ve done this hundreds of times, been to my father’s grave, so all the fear and all the worry just dissipated and it felt very easy and long story long, I got the part and Adriene played my wife and her mother was the artistic director and the artistic director at St. Edwards University at the time and she came to the show and basically told my mom if I go to the audition for St. Edwards I could get a full ride. So I went to the audition, did a scene from Romeo and Juliet and it went great. The only caveat was that I had to be an actor, and they’d teach me how to do it. I learned a lot at St. Edwards and I’ve learned a lot throughout my career, but I always say there’s nothing more profound the lesson of just running towards the things you’re afraid of and doing as much as you can in your life, so that when you arrive on the day, you know you’re not a phony, just speaking from truth. So, that’s how I started.
Is theater something you aspire to do more of?
I started doing films right out of college and returned to the theater in 2008 and did a bunch of shows in Austin.
Speaking on Broadway, Yvonne Boudreaux, who was the production designer on a film I did called Dance with the One, which I did in conjunction with the UTFI program at The University of Texas, now does the production design for Yellowstone. Back then she was a student at UT and she introduced me to a person named Dustin Mills who became one of my best friends and my colleague, the two of us and some others started a company called Paper Chairs in Austin. We did a few shows, won nine Austin Critics Table Awards and did a show called Black Snow where I met my wife Smaranda. We’ve been now been married 14 years. Dustin Mills, who was our director, is actually directing on Broadway right now and we were all going to do a show in Williamstown this summer, Tennessee Williams’s one act play Camina Real , but I booked Terminal List. That would have been the reunion of Dustin, myself and my wife. My wife is actually going to be in the play.
And you split time in Austin?
Yeah, I get back as often as I can. I come every April for my grandma’s birthday, if I can, and every September for my mother’s birthday and sometimes I secretly catch a flight and pop in to surprise everybody. I’m there at least three or four times a year and it changes so much every time I’m there, but south of Ben White, where I’m from in South Austin, it seems to be the same as it ever was, and that’s really comforting. When I come to town I usually try to keep a low profile and just stay at my grandma’s house and spend as much time as possible as I can with her. She’s 92 years old, but she’s doing really, really well. She was still cutting her own grass until four years ago when we had to step in and put the kibosh on that because it gets too hot in the summer for her to be cutting her grass.
We recently had Matthew McConaughey’s mom on the cover and she’s 93-years-old and still very spry.
I did a picture called Bernie right before I left to Los Angeles directed by Richard Linklater that Matthew McConaughey and Jack Black starred in and Matthew’s mama was in that movie. She was great in it. We shot it in 2010, it premiered late 2011 in LA and it was really cool because it was my first taste of a big LA premiere when it premiered at the LA Film Festival. I was sitting next to Jon Lithgow then, who I just saw recently at an Oscar party.
Lots of full circle moments. It’s like my grandpa used to say, when this kind of stuff happens, when you keep bumping into the same people, you see somebody that you grew up with in Paris or on a random street or something, it’s where you’re supposed to be, exactly supposed to be.
You moved to LA in 2011?
Yes, shortly after we did the premier for Bernie, and I worked as a flower delivery man, the same job I did when I was in Austin for a few years until I popped off and got my first leading role on television for Robert Rodriguez in a show called Matador. It was great to work with a hometown boy, and that was kind of it. I quit my flower delivery job and have been doing this ever since.
So many actors have moved to Austin the last few years and everyone’s rallying for new tax credits. Do you think if it were easy to work here, you’d move back full-time?
It’s a globalized world now, so there’s really no specific place you have to be, so I could live in Austin, and I would love that, but I think my wife likes the big city hustle and bustle. I’m a little bit more quiet, and of course I love home, but I get it back often enough that I don’t feel that I’m completely detached. And I’ve been primarily in Canada the last three years and prior to that, it was Rome and Guatemala and Budapest and all these other place we’re shooting.
All the homes in my family in Austin are paid off thanks to this work, so would I ever go back to settle down? It’s possible.
This issue is out June 1, just after the finale of the second season of The Last of Us. They’ve already confirmed there will be a season 3, can you confirm you’re in that one?
I can’t confirm or deny, but for those who know the trajectory of the game, not to say that Craig won’t change it and the way things play out, but I feel comfortable I’ll be going back.
In Terminal List you play a former Navy Seal? Are you doing any special training for that?
I’ve been doing parts where I’ve had to train and get shredded, like True Detective. In fact, in True Detective I worked with the Navy Seals, Mark Semos and Ray Mendoza and Ray Mendoza is our military advisor on the Terminal List. He’s a fantastic person and incredible resource and an asset for anybody who works with them. He currently has a fantastic film in theaters called Warfare that he directed with Alex Garland. So, I have all of that in my back pocket from years of doing this.
Just yesterday, I went down to Camp Pendleton and was really appreciative of a young Marine named Oscar Castro, who now works as a talent liaison trying to mesh together the military and entertainment business to get authenticity. I embedded with the infantry immersion training session, where they take young Marines out in what almost looks like a Hollywood backlot. It’s a fully functional city with all the buildings that you would see
in some local street in Afghanistan or Iraq and at present there’s a large ISIS presence in the Philippines so they had 50 role players who spoke Filipino and local food and they pipe in the smells and they create all these scenarios and it was really incredible to watch and be able to absorb whatever I could.
You also play music, do you think there’s an album in your future?
I have a handful of songs on Spotify that I wrote and want to re-record, but I don’t know. I mostly play music to free my mind and I don’t know if I’d want to make it a job per se. But, I do play music quite a bit at work. I do it to set the stage a little bit each day. There might be a tune that aligns with the work or the scenes that we’re going to be doing and I use it as a way in a lot of times. It also helps to keep a nice little melody in the air when everybody’s wound up because a movie set can become a very stressful place and I’ve been told that it’s a positive distraction. Over the years I’ve learned the ebbs and flows in the way a movie set breathes and when is a good time break up the time and make everyone happy.
If you could have a superpower, what would it be?
Teleportation
GABRIEL’S AUSTIN RECS
Restaurants For Barbecue I like to go to Lockhart to The Original Blacks, Southside Barbecue in Elgin. If I want Tex-Mex we go to Matt’s El Rancho quite a bit. But, when I think of home, I think of Dan’s Hamburgers and biscuits and gravy in the morning with my grandpa, who’s not around anymore, but I still go with my grandma. For burgers. Casino El Camino. Pizza probably a greasy slice from Roppolo’s after partying all night on 6th Street or if I’m being better Home Slice or 313 is really good, Detroit-style. You can’t go wrong with Whataburger. And Jim-Jim’s Water Ice for Italian ices. It’s a tiny hole in the wall, if you blink you’ll miss it, but it’s 6th Street on the west side of I-35 right before you get to the highway.
Music and Bars Go to Antone’s, one of my best friends Gary Clark Jr. owns it. Broken Spoke of course, a honky tonk that’s still standing, The Continental Club, C-Boys, Whisler’s and the little mezcal bar upstairs, Don’s Depot, of course, it’s fantastic. Coffee Cherrywood Coffeehouse, near my old place. My wife used to live over there when she was getting her masters at UT and we used to go there all the time when we first met. Radio Coffee is also great down south.
Also go to Barton Springs, hike The Greenbelt, all the good stuff.
Functional Beverage Founder Spencer McManes
On building a Kava-based alcohol alternative - and proposing to Olympic track star Gabby Thomas
ARTICLE BY JENNIFER BIRN
The global market for non-alcoholic beverages is booming as more people than ever are giving up alcohol for good. The trend has run in parallel with a bevy of beverages hitting the market to provide something to drink that purportedly provides a bit of a buzz, without the hangover. Drinks infused with various legal mushrooms have become popular in this category, but Spencer McManes decided to create one using a lesser-used ingredient, with kava as a base.
Kava comes from a plant and also has medicinal effects, but it still has few competitors, giving Spencer runway to be an early leader in the space. He has a loyal fan in Olympic gold medalist Gabby Thomas - who as of March of this year is also his fiancée!
Top: Photo by Eleanor Lee/@Merakinarrative Bottom: @aboutthisphotography
We had a chat with Spencer to learn more about Kaviva… and his proposal.
WHAT LED YOU TO START KAVIVA?
It was around the summer of 2022 I was thinking there has to be a better social beverage out there than alcohol. I had done a life assessment for myself and noticed that everything in the not going great column tied back to alcohol.
People are going to want to go out, be social and feel some sort of buzz, that’s not going to change, but alcohol isn’t the right answer. So, I started experimenting. I was drinking Kava tea after a rugby match with one of my teammates from Fiji and I thought, ‘Gosh, this would be so good if I were at the bar in downtown Austin’. But, I didn’t like the taste, so I went home and started googling Kava extract and saw a few drinks, from my now competitors, and thought I’d like to make my own.
ARE YOU ENJOYING ENTREPRENEURSHIP?
I do. I love it. I’ve created quite a few business plans of different things I was interested in. If I thought it had a 5 percent or even 1 percent chance of working, I would make a business plan as if I was going to do it just to figure it out. This is the one that made the most sense and got the furthest. Then I told a friend I was going to go raise a bunch of money and do a big production run and he suggested I raise $3000 and do it in my kitchen. So, that’s what I did, and Kaviva came to life.
SO YOU SELF-FUNDED?
It’s bootstrapped with friends and family and no outside capital at this point. I’m trying to take it as far as I can figuring it out so that when the time comes to raise money I know how I’m going to use it, what ad spend is and what that means, what my cost per can is and all that stuff.
POPPI STARTED IN THE FOUNDER’S KITCHEN AND JUST SOLD FOR NEARLY $2 BILLION.
The beverage industry is so interesting. There are big incumbent players, like a Pepsi and Anheuser Bush that wait and let people like me figure out what the market’s asking for and build it up, and then if you’re lucky, you get a great opportunity to sell.
AND YOU ALSO STILL HAVE A DAY JOB?
I do. I still have a day job as a customer success manager at Data Grail. My boss has been very supportive. He’s a big kava fan as well. I want to make sure I’ve done everything I possibly can do before I leave my full-time job. Of course, that means I’m basically working two jobs, but I don’t want to leave full-time and have there be a bunch of low hanging fruit that I hadn’t done yet that I could have done on a weekend.
YOU WENT TO YALE WHERE YOU WERE QUARTERBACK OF THE FOOTBALL TEAM, AND GABBY WENT TO HARVARD. WHAT’S THAT RIVALRY LIKE AT HOME?
We have that rivalry for sure, but it really only comes up one day a year, and that day we’re always wearing opposing colors.
AND YOU MET ON INSTAGRAM?
Yep, that’s right. I saw her name pop up on Instagram, and I had to ask her why she followed me.
SHE’S SAID YOUR PROPOSAL WAS THE FIRST TIME YOU’VE SURPRISED HER. HOW LONG WERE YOU PLANNING IT?
Truly planning it was about six weeks, but I’d known for quite a while that she was the one for me. Then the timeline evolved through our conversations on what we wanted out of life.
DO YOU GUYS EVER TRAIN TOGETHER?
Yeah, I try to join her for track practices because they’re so, so challenging and it counts for a whole week of workouts for me. It will just be a handful of sprints on one day, all out and I absolutely love that. It’s fun. We’ll mix in another workout here and there during her off season.
ANYTHING YOU’D LIKE TO ADD?
The reason I keep pushing on Kaviva is because I love it, but also I love the fact that there’s a different challenge every day and that I have to be the Chief Marketing Officer and the Head of Sales and the Chief Operating Officer. I love wearing all the hats, and the more people and customers I talk to that love Kaviva, it makes me keep going. One day it won’t be just online, but people will be able to get it at the bar or a restaurant and still feel some sort of social uplift without having to rely on alcohol. And honestly, I think one day, the generations behind us will probably look at alcohol the way millennials look at smoking cigarettes. The average number of Americans who smoke is continuing to trend down. Alcohol is starting that trend as well. No one knows if it’ll stick, but I think it will. So, it’s fun being on the cutting edge of something. Not everyone knows what Kava is, so I get to explain it all the time.
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE GO TO FLAVOR?
There’s a new flavor that’s probably my favorite, the Kavita Rita.
DOES GABBY HAVE A GO TO FAVORITE?
Gabby likes the Pineapple Coconut.
Kaviva is currently available on https://enjoykaviva.com/ and on Amazon
MEET THE FONSIES
Fons PR's Brandy Fons reflects on 15 years & what she's looking forward to this summer
Brandy and Ryan Fons were both freelance publicists who represented film studios & independent filmmakers when they moved to Austin in January 2006. They officially joined forces to form Fons PR, Inc July 2010 and now have 10 employees they affectionately refer to as Fonsies. The Fonsies, which include Brad Johnson who has been with them 13 of those years and Christine Lemchi, who started as an intern and has now been with them a
decade, have helped them work on about 80 films a year! This includes the majority of the biggest premieres at SXSW for the last 16 years and as of the last two years, managing the red carpet for all official SXSW film screenings, which led to 35 red carpets in seven days this year!
Reflecting on 15+ years of Fons PR, Brandy says the most memorable moment was being proposed to in front of an audience for Lord of The Rings:
ARTICLE BY JENNIFER BIRN | PHOTOGRAPHY BY WES ELLIS
Bryan and Brandy Fons
The Return Of The King! Brandy says she and Bryan started dating around the time the first Lord of the Rings was released and, “A few years later we worked with Elijah Wood at Fantastic Fest and then went on to get tattoos together, work on many of his films together and even
collaborate on his collectible division Mutant now too. This would be my favorite full-circle celebrity moment for sure”.
As film experts, we asked Brandy what summer films she’s most looking forward to and she said she and her team are absolutely obsessed
with A24’s The Materialist . She says it’s her favorite movie of the entire year and elaborated saying she thinks Dakota Johnson’s performance is flawless and with “the music, the fashion, the dialogue and costars Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans, it’s my new favorite modern-day love story movie!”
On the Fons front this summer Brandy says she’s excited to work with longtime client the Alamo Drafthouse on their Rolling Roadshow tour with upcoming screenings of Jaws on The Water in Austin,
to celebrate a new film called Dangerous Animals at Volente Beach Resort and to celebrate Fantastic Fests 20-year anniversary (16 of which Fons has worked on it), where along with publicity, social, sponsorship and influencer coverage they have represented over 160 film campaigns during the festival – the largest genre film festival in the US! Brandy consequently has nine festival tattoos she says are “to celebrate the movies, hard work/ endless hours/success and the community we genre fans we adore.”
AUSTIN LIFESTYLE™
LICK HONEST ICE CREAM
ARTICLE BY JENNIFER BIRN
The Austin-born ice cream is so pure, honest is its middle name.
Lick Honest Ice Creams originated in Texas in 2011, the creation of Chad Palmatier and Anthony Sobotik. They said they put “honest” in the name because they use the purest ingredients and never use artificial colors or flavors, high fructose corn syrup or preservatives. And, they can trace every single ingredient they use to its source, collaborating with local chocolatiers, bee keepers and butchers and sourcing their milk and cream from family-owned dairy farms for every handmade batch.
We had a chat with Anthony to learn more about the ice cream which some flavors that sounds like they belong in a Shel Silverstein poem such as Cilantro Lime, Dewberry Corn Cobbler and Sage ice cream.
YOU AND CHAD LIVED IN NYC BEFORE MOVING TO AUSTIN TO LAUNCH LICK. WHY DID YOU THINK AUSTIN WAS THE RIGHT HOME FOR IT?
I grew up not far from Austin so I visited often as a kid and then I went to UT and fell in love with this city. I moved away after college, but I always knew I wanted to move back and make it my home once again. Austin just has a great sense of individuality and creativity so I felt confident that Lick would be embraced by the people of this city. Also, having grown up in the region with grandparents who were farmers, it was also incredibly important to me that Lick sourced from and supported family-owned farms in that same region.
Coconut Cream Pie
Photo by Annie Ray
YOU MAKE SEASONAL ICE CREAMS BASED ON WHAT’S AVAILABLE AT LOCAL FARMS. WHAT HAVE BEEN SOME OF YOUR MOST OUTLANDISH FLAVORS?
To me and the team at Lick, we don’t think of any of our flavors as outlandish. They’re just flavor profiles we find interesting and delicious. But, I’d say the one that is the most out there is our Roasted Beets and Fresh Mint. It’s a great example of using what is readily available to us from local farmers and creating something that’s unexpected and delicious. Surprisingly, it’s really popular with kids!
WHAT’S AN OFF-THE-WALL COMBO YOU TRIED THAT DIDN’T WORK?
I think this might be the Basil & Tomato Jam flavor. The tomato jam came off too much like a marinara sauce and just wasn’t sweet enough. Needless to say, it wasn’t popular with customers, but I still think it can work! Maybe we’ll try it again someday.
WHAT’S A SURPRISING ICE CREAM FLAVOR THAT YOU’RE SURPRISED DID WORK?
I was surprised by how well the Coconut Avocado Curd flavor came together. It exceeded my expectations and customers loved it!
WHAT’S BEEN YOUR BEST-SELLING UNIQUE SEASONAL FLAVOR?
It’s pretty much a tie between Sweet Cream & Strawberry, Lemon Lavender and Hazel’s Pumpkin Pie.
WHAT’S YOUR MOST POPULAR OVERALL FLAVOR?
Hill Country Honey and Vanilla Bean.
WHAT ARE YOUR AND CHAD’S FAVORITE FLAVORS?
My favorite flavor is Cilantro Lime. It’s the first flavor I made with the concept of Lick in mind and I never get tired of eating it, even after 15 years! Chad’s favorite flavor is Orange Chocolate. He could eat it all year long.
HOW MUCH ICE CREAM DO YOU EACH EAT IN A WEEK?
I’d say we both eat about a pint and a half a week on average. I eat it almost daily at home and then we have weekly quality check where I’ve been known to overdo it on occasion.
WHAT SEASONAL ICE CREAMS ARE COMING THIS SUMMER?
We have an orange dreamsicle ice cream with dye-free rainbow sprinkles. We’ll also have Cilantro Lime, Just Peachy, Coconut Cream Pie and Cherry Limeade.
Just Peachy, Photo courtesy of Repsplendent
FAVORITE THINGS
1. PURSUED BY BEAR WINES
Owned by Kyle MacLachlan, a native of Yakima, Washington, who grew up near the prestigious vineyards where his grapes are now grown. The actor, known for roles from Twin Peaks to Sex in the City, showed his passion for wine when he hosted a tasting at Boa Steakhouse, where his wines are on the menu. You can order them and learn more of the origin story at https://www.pursuedbybearwine.com
ARTICLE BY JENNIFER BIRN
2. PONCHO SNAKE RIVER SHIRT
For the dad who wants form meets function, this shirt is lightweight, breathable, dries in minutes, has easy-open magnetic pockets and can be worn out on the water to dinner. Wearers are also in good company with the Austin-based brand worn by fellow locals like Matthew McConaughey, Ryan Bingham and Colt McCoy. https://www.ponchooutdoors.com/
3. A TREATMENT AT INNATE BEAUTY:
Men could benefit from giving their biggest organ (their skin) a little more TLC. Give the man in your life the nudge he may need with a gift card. Dr. Ling suggests dermal fillers for a chiseled jaw line, Brotox, TruBody for building muscle and melting fat, lasers for brown spots and hair restoration, or microneedling for wrinkles, pores and texture. . https://innatebeauty.com/
4. BCKR COOL ONE PULLOVER
BCKR Cool One pullover is made with both a cooling performance fabric that wicks heat and moisture away from your skin, and a Japanese fabric with ventilation holes that make it ultra breathable.The Austinbased company makes p remium jackets and hats specifically with game-day enthusiasts in mind and 10 percent of product sales go to support UT’s student-athletes https://www.bckr.com/
5. ELYSIAN HEAD SPA
Give the gift of relaxation with a Bespoke treatment that is customized based on the client’s needs and the treatment specialist’s recommendations. A head massage is heavenly, in addition to stimulating hair growth, and because most men have shorter hair, they get a lot of sun exposure to their scalp, so really benefit from the exfoliation and hydration. https://www.elysianheadspa.com/
