Background
In the Spring of 2018, a close friend and I decided that we wanted to tell our stories in our own way -- what does it mean to be educated and empowered Muslim women in the public sphere? In our daytime jobs, we felt like we were fulfilling the bare minimum of what our potential was. In the conversations we had, within our group of friends and the community around us, we realized that divisive stereotypes and narratives remained in their place, largely, and that our lives consisted of workarounds, rather than confronting those problematic narratives head-on.
How might we find ways to tell our story and make our mark in the community around us in a way that represented who we are?
Cofounders— Hiba A. and Hiba J.
Enter Bluenoon, an artisanal gelato company specializing in flavors and textures inspired by the Middle East and South Asia.
My business partner, Hiba J, is Syrian-American and I am Pakistani-American. We are both passionate about telling our story using a medium with wide appeal. Bluenoon came about as a project devoted to telling our stories and spreading awareness about who we are and the traditions of sharing, feeding, coming together, and having empathetic conversations about our respective cultures. We wanted to create a product that would bring people together to share a delicious and unique scoop of gelato, rich in the flavors and textures that reflect our cultural backgrounds. So we went back to our families and researched recipes we’ve grown up with: knafeh, gulab jamun, rosewater and tamarind, baklava, mango lassi, ras malai, kulfi, cardamom chai, and more.
Research & Business Strategy
In the first three months of our process we met up at Hiba J’s apartment, taking on the barebones tasks needed to build a company from the ground up. We learned many things, including that the global frozen food market was valued at $291.3 billion and was estimated to reach $404.8 billion by 2027. We also learned that the biggest trend in frozen desserts was non-traditional flavors, that there are less than 1,000 gelato companies in the United States and none of them sold flavors like ours. Only one company, Malai, specialized in South Asian flavors sold both in-shop and local New York grocery stores.
Above is an early-stage competitive/comparative analysis we had completed as part of that research.
Branding
Before diving into what we now know to be a “design studio,” we created a mood board of images that we believed represented Bluenoon as a brand.
We shared these mood boards with our designer, along with our sketches, and together we came up with our 4-pint prototypes. Below are examples of our Vanilla prototype, as well as the final products on the right.
Press and Engagement
Having our pint prototypes in hand, we began securing features and speaking engagements with food and social justice-driven media including Pineapple Collaborative, The Edible Activism podcast, the James Beard Foundation, Women’s Wire Weekly, 202 Creates, the Smithsonian, and Edible DC. Check out our feature in the DCist here!
In 2019, we participated in and won an award for our Pistachio Baklava flavor at Gelato Festival DC. We were also invited to pitch to Whole Foods, which was slated to take place in 2020.
Bluenoon on Shelves
In order to achieve our goal of being in local grocery store shelves by the fall, we researched and learned everything we needed to on pint and packing best practices and frozen food distribution.
By Summer of 2019, we achieved our goal and were officially on shelves in local grocery stores around the city! As our orders increased, we learned to be more efficient in our process.
The Aftermath
In March of 2020, Hiba A and I made the hard decision to stop Bluenoon operations due to hardships caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though we are no longer in business, I do not consider this venture a failure.
Startups rely on innovative thinking along with skillsets to develop forward-thinking solutions that speak directly to the needs of its potential customers. Bluenoon was the answer to needs we had as creators, but it also addressed unspoken needs in the market, plugging a unique product onto shelves laden with the same old ubiquitous flavors, and opening up a space for the cultures associated with the product to create a new association in the minds of our customers.
Basically, we carved out a conversation for storytelling by centering our identities in a time which we felt marginalized to a greater extent due to the greater climate, using our product as the medium. There were so many lessons to learn here, and so much impact we had in the D.C. community, among not only the everyday consumer, but also to consumers from immigrant backgrounds looking to recreate experiences of home in the U.S. We unequivocally consider that a success.
After wrapping up Bluenoon and, it felt like a natural next step to enroll in General Assembly’s 400+ hour User Experience Design Immersive. Transitioning into UX has felt like a continuation of the design process we explored while building our company. Studying UX allowed me to revisit each step of the entrepreneurial process, and helped me find a place where my passion for service, creativity, and leadership instinct could all find a home career.
Flavors, Incubators, Goals, and Training
We began experimenting with ingredients and flavors with a $60 at-home Cuisinart ice cream maker, pulling from our mothers’ cookbooks and recipes, until we began to achieve the textures and tastes we were looking for, iterating on these over and over throughout the process.
Having no background in food or business, we set out to find an incubator that could serve as a foundation and resource as we worked towards this dream. Union Kitchen, based in NE Washington, D.C., became that resource. After a long application process, we were finally accepted into the incubator and started the work of building our business.
In January 2019, we created a company concept and business strategy, centering Bluenoon as a socially conscious food business rooted in a company culture espousing values of ethnic representation, storytelling, and empowerment of women in the food space. We developed an executed digital and social branding and marketing strategy and established SMART goals. Our first one? Get on shelves in local D.C. grocery stores by Q2 2019.
Having pooled some of our savings together to buy and source ingredients and materials for the first round of recipe development, we started to develop a solid idea of what constituted the closest taste and texture for desserts we were trying to recreate in gelato form. But we knew we needed more training, more ingredients, and after the four-month incubator, we needed to find a way to pay rent at the kitchen.
We applied and secured seed phase investment via a Kiva loan. This loan allowed us to secure professional gelatiere training and certification from Carpigiani Gelato University, along with taking on the basic tasks to begin executing our concept.