With more than 30 flavours of ice cream, chocolates, cheese, butter and more, PEI’s COWS is a moooving success

COWS began to make ice cream in 1983 in Cavendish with an old-fashioned recipe that originated in Prince Edward Island. In fact, the secret COWS’ recipe dates back to the time of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s fabled story Anne of Green Gables and contains the same all-natural ingredients that were enjoyed by children during that era.

In a very short time, the demand for COWS ice cream and products increased dramatically, and COWS quickly became a Prince Edward Island symbol as identifiable as Anne herself. The popularity of COWS ice cream has led to tremendous growth but despite the demand COWS has not strayed from using its traditional methods and old fashioned ingredients. Currently, they produce more than flavours of ice cream and continue to serve their frozen delights in house-made waffle cones at their retail locations.

As much as we love COWS ice cream the first thing we go for when visiting a COWS location is their chocolate covered potato chips. They are the absolutely ideal blend of sweet meets salty and are also the perfect marriage of Island potatoes with Anne of Green Gables chocolate.

Ice cream from an old-fashioned Prince Edward Island family recipe has been combined with the clothing and fun products to become the COWS store of today. While clothing sales now represent a major component of the business, it is their super premium ice cream that continues to drive the store’s success and keeps customers coming back for more.

Wondering what it is that makes COWS ice cream so good? It is super premium, because they use cream with a very high butterfat content of approximately 16 per cent. The ice cream is mixed slowly so that it contains very little air: just enough to prevent the ice cream from freezing into a solid block
of ice! The result is a creamy, high-density product that melts slowly in your mouth, allowing you to truly savour the delightful taste.

COWS use the finest ingredients available and only Prince Edward Island milk to make their ice cream. All their ice creams contain fresh cream and eggs, and sugar. As they introduce each new flavour, they carefully select only the finest ingredients available. For instance, strawberry ice cream is made with fresh Prince Edward Island berries, chocolate ice cream is made with the finest cocoa imported from Holland, and vanilla ice cream is made with pure natural vanilla.

All the recipes are mixed by hand by expert ice cream makers, and many of the chocolate additions are created right next door by sister company, Anne of Green Gables Chocolates. They prepare chocolate pieces and buttery caramel for COWS most popular ice cream, Wowie Cowie, and the crunchy toffee pieces that appear in so many of their flavours.

Many flavour ideas come directly from their customers. Once a new flavour makes the cut, it’s important to come up with a fun name for it, which is something consumers have come to expect. Many have, not surprisingly, cow-pun-based names such as Cownadian Maple, Moo York Cheesecake, Royal Cownadian Mint, and Orange Cowsicle.

In 1985, COWS introduced a fun assortment of clothing for its staff to wear. A great deal of attention was drawn to these clothing items by the ice cream customers; not only did the customers want to buy ice cream, but they wanted to buy the staff clothing as well. Responding to this interest, COWS introduced a line of T-shirts and sweatshirts, which featured the colourful images of outstanding designers. The images became extremely popular and further products (caps, mugs, towels, sleepwear, etc.) were added to the COWS retail mix. COWS clothing and images have been seen around the world!

COWS began making cheddar cheese in 2006. The first cheese was Avonlea Clothbound Cheddar, an English style clothbound cheddar that is aged for 18 months in a special aging cave. Today, the COWS Creamery produces six types of cheddar (including 1-, 2- and 3-year-old styles), and three types of butter. These are super premium butters, made using milk with 84 per cent butterfat content, where most butters have 80 per cent butterfat. These products are available in sea salted, unsalted or as cultured butter.

All COWS creamery products are sold across Canada. Recently a new initiative was launched; COWS Creamery boxes. COWS now ships boxes of their delicious cheddars and butters directly to their customers’ homes.

Additionally, COWS has 13 locations across Canada; seven stores in PEI, two in Halifax, NS, and one each in in Quebec City, QC, Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON, Banff, AB, and Whistler, BC.