FAQ

1. Where can I buy your ice cream in my area?

You can find our points of sale on our website in the map as well as on the list. If there is no store selling our ice cream in your town, you can help to make it happen: print out our product-request-form and bring it by at your local store or restaurant. This way, they have all the essential information about The Green Fairy products and know that their customers would like them to offer The Green Fairy ice cream.

2. Can I get your products delivered to my home?

Yes, that’s possible – in all of Switzerland! You can finally order our ice cream online and have it delivered to your home by the first organic-online shop offering frozen-delivery: www.yardobio.ch/the-green-fairy-2

3. Where and when can I buy the Pixie ice cream?

After a successful crowdfunding campaign and the resolution of technical problems, our Pixies are finally ready to order. Since this process took quite a while, it is possible that not every shop already offers them. You are more than welcome to inform your local store about your interest in the Pixies. They turned out very yummy and we are super-exited to be able to present them to you!

4. You call your ice cream „fair trade“, but there is no Fairtrade-Max Havelaar-Label on the package. Why is that and why is it still „fair trade“?

Out of conviction, we purchase our ingredients coming from developing countries (chocolate, cocoa, coffee, sugar…) from Fairtrade-Max Havelaar-certified production whenever possible. Those ingredients are declared as such on our list of ingredients, which is accessible on our website. The ice cream as a whole is not Max-Havelaar-certified.

There are two reasons for that. First of all, the process of certification would be very expensive for us. Even though we are a small company, we are not categorized as a «Small Producer Organisation» because we have our ice cream produced by contract production. We looked into this with great commitment since we originally really wanted to get Max-Havelaar certified. However, we would have to pay the same fees as big companies, which we cannot afford.

Furthermore, there are mainly European ingredients in most of our products. Those cannot get Max-Havelaar certified. That is why we scarcely reached the minimum percentage of Fairtrade-certified ingredients required to get the product certified as a whole (in some of our products, raw cane sugar is the only certified ingredient because all the other ingredients are European).

"Fairtrade" written with a capital letter is only allowed to use for Fairtrade-certified products, whereas "fairtrade" in small letters is not reserved. For the reasons explained previously, we consider it justified to make use of the term the way we do. Speaking of which: Sonja from The Green Fairy has written her PhD on Ethics addressing the question what "fair trade" stands for. That is what inspired her to set up her own company doing business as ethical as possible.

5. Unequally filled cups

Our cups are usually filled with around 125 ml ice cream, which corresponds to a filling up to the line inside the cup. Those 125 ml weight around 80g in the case of vanilla. In all the other flavours that corresponds to a weight of around 100g. In general, a steady filling line and a perfect finish on the top of our products is not realistic since our products are organic and, unlike mainstream companies, we do not make use of industrial stabilisers. Some irregularities are to expect.

Those irregularities, of course, are not supposed to be too big. But even though we do our best to prevent half filled cups from reaching our customers, it can happen every once in a while. We are sincerely sorry if this has occurred to you! Come by at our next event and let us know. We’ll give out a free scoop of your favourite ice cream as our apology.

We have been struggling with this problem for quite a while now and are working on it in collaboration with our producer who fills the cups. Another reason for our technical problems, aside from the renunciation of industrial stabilisers, is explained by the bits and pieces in the ice cream. Those happen to plug the glands from time to time. However, there is definitely potential for improvement and we are constantly taking pains to get rid of this problem. By the way: Ben & Jerrys handle this issue by putting the cup upside down while the ice cream is hardening. This way, the customers do not note any irregularities and the cup looks full every time.

6. There seems to be something wrong with the Chocolate-Peanutbutter Recipe in the book „Eis mit Stil“.

Unfortunately, that’s true! There has occurred an error: instead of 190 g cocoa you only need 20 g!

Also, there is a mistake in the recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies: you actually need 175 g of flour.

I sincerely apologize for this printing error and wish you a lot of fun making your own, yummy ice cream!

7. I am struggling to find the ingredients for the recipes in your book «Eis mit Stil».

In the opening of the book you can find a precise instruction how to replace those. So read it carefully! Here, you can find the most important bullet points:

• Ice-Wizard: Unfortunately, I currently don’t distribute the Ice-Wizard myself. Therefore, you would have to put it together yourself – you will find the ingredients in most wholefood shops. If you don’t want to do that, you can also make the ice cream without the Ice-Wizard. It will turn out delicious either way.
• Maranta-Tapioca-Starch is difficult to find in Switzerland. That doesn’t matter, because you can
  replace it with arrowroot flour and the result will be just as good.

8. Why does it say «may contain traces of dairy milk» on your Chocolate-Chip Ice Cream even thou your ice cream is vegan and dairy-free?

That’s because of the real, dark chocolate we use for our chocolate ice cream. It is produced in a chocolate factory on machines where there is also milk chocolate produced from time to time. The chance of actually finding traces of dairy milk in the ice cream is very small, but we need to declare it like this for legal reasons. This situation is also known by the vegan certification body, which has certified our ice cream as vegan. It is the case for almost any vegan chocolate or products containing vegan chocolate.

9. Why do your Salted Caramel-Ice Cream and the Strawberry-Ice Cream contain natural (organic) flavour?

In Switzerland, the use of natural flavours in organic food products is allowed without any restrictions. Nevertheless, we try to produce our organic ice cream without any additional flavours whenever possible. We always put large quantities of the eponymous ingredient (pistachio, chocolate, strawberry puree and so on) into our ice cream to obtain an intense, natural flavour. The fact that we do this even for the pistachio ice cream, proves that we don’t, under no circumstances, spare any real ingredients while using additional flavours instead. Because pistachio paste is extremely expensive, most pistachio ice cream is produced with additional flavours. However, two of our ice cream varieties (Strawberry and Salted Caramel) contain natural, additional flavours, which has caused some confusion amongst our customers.

There are different reasons for that:

In the case of our Salted Caramel Ice Cream, we add a small amount of natural caramel flavour (using only natural, organic-certified flavour). After months of trial, this is the only possible way that we could find to reach a caramel flavour as intense as we wanted it to be while still preserving the creamy texture of the ice cream. If we used even more “real” caramel (in our case made without any cream) to reach the intensity we aim for, the ice cream would be a lot waterier and never as creamy as we want it to be. That is why we decided to handle it this way because we value a delicious taste experience more than the renunciation of natural, additional flavour.

However, in the case of our Strawberry Ice Cream, there is only natural flavour added in the organic strawberry bits, which we buy from another producer. Since we have not found any other vegan, organic strawberry bits on the market and the amount we use is too small for a producer to manufacture them especially for us, we accept the fact that a tiny share of the ice cream contains additional, natural flavour. Those fruity bits need to be prepared especially for the ice cream to prevent them from crystallisation, which would make them hard and inedible. In a complicated process, they are being confected in a sugar solution over and over again.