Afters Ice Cream
How this product has revolutionized late night ice cream orders on DoorDash
Ice cream and I have had a rocky road. It used to be its own stream that ran through my veins through my teens into my twenties. I enjoyed it so much that I found excuses to order Frappuccino’s for breakfast so I could continue to enjoy it at any time. Then we hit a point about a decade ago when lactose intolerance was a real part of my life. I don’t know what happened, it just went away and I’m okay now. Instead of searching for that coconut or oat milk ice cream, I can grab a pint on DoorDash without the extra leg work of finding something that was either sorbet or dairy-free.
That’s how Afters became a part of the conversation. I haven’t been to the store front; I’ve only seen it as an option on DoorDash. I’ve glanced it in the frozen food section of some supermarkets, but never the flavors that I want. Let’s dive into what makes this hot item brand all of the rage for those that order it online.
Problem Solving Skills
I swing one of two ways when I’m ordering dessert on DoorDash. I either grab something off of Dash Mart, or I order a dessert entree from an establishment and take my chances on how it will arrive for me. Most of the time it’s Dash Mart, because when it’s late at night, the kind of late where walking to your car in your pajamas to enter your local corner store seems obscene, you take the option that will be at your door within twenty minutes.
Earlier this year I saw Afters show up as an ice cream option. A pint of well named ice creams and matching chocolate bars. Ice cream isn’t self-explanatory. You either want Talenti, Gelato, or Tillamook, or you’ll settle for one of the lesser brands if they have a decent sale. Afters showed up on the menu pint-sized and only a few dollars more than the other top tier brands. Who did they think they were?
I had to order them once just so I would know what to complain about. I was pleasantly surprised when the bars and pint arrived and it was special. The ice cream flavors are Saigon Coffee, Cookie Butter, and Dubai Chocolate. I’ve tried all three and they’re all unique in their own way.
Cookie Butter was my favorite. As a pint, it’s got the smoothness of salted caramel, with the added texture of pecan ice cream. For their chocolate bars, they take that same ice cream and double dip in chocolate fudge. The bar itself is on par with higher end chocolate bars. The chocolate doesn’t break off as you eat it, but melts to the ice cream and the ice cream stays in place. I think this has to do with the milk fat content of the ice cream, I would guess there’s a bit of custard in it to give it its texture.
Saigon Coffee I could drink. Think of the best Thai iced coffee you’ve ever had in your life and put it into a pint-sized ice cream. I wanted one of these so bad the other day, that I DoorDashed it to work, at ten in the morning. I needed it a little melted, so I had to go to the staff break room to put it into a microwave for twenty seconds. Then I carried my pint past a hall full of my coworkers and waved at them like I was normally walking past with a cup of coffee.
Dubai Chocolate took me by surprise. I avoided this one because I’ve been off of chocolate for a while. I go through phases. This has pistachios and so I gave it a try. It’s not your standard rocky road. It has huge chunks of pistachio and caramel bites, and it takes effort to eat it. This is not for the soft serve crowd. I’ve nuked this a bit as well and you wouldn’t be able to just drink it due to the size of the nuts chopped into it. This brand earns their price tag because the ingredients are there.
Broad Communication Skills
The packaging is perfect. There aren’t any embellishments or photos of the product. It’s just a plain black container with the information written right on to it. The style of the packaging is more reminiscent of a facial cream I’d pick up at a department store than a pint of ice cream. Branding will always get me.
When it’s after midnight and you’ve clicked on an app for another human being to drop a pint of ice cream off at your front door, having a container that looks smart and well thought out makes you feel like less of a failure. I’m not reaching into that bag to grab a green and pink container that has any words related to chunky, happy, yummy, or any of the seven dwarves. I reach into that bag and I grab a black container labeled Afters that has the nutritional information of what I’m about to consume while binge-watching a television series that I should not be watching so late at night. It’s not an impulse buy born of a lack of self-control; it’s a curated item that matches the theme of the moment.
Try ordering this one night and see if the packaging doesn’t make you feel like you aren’t even eating ice cream.
Root Cause Analysis
Afters doesn’t talk down to its customers. The lid isn’t sealed shut like a bank vault the way the lids of Talenti are made. It comes off easily like an item that understands the lid was meant to keep the contents safe and once it was removed, it would never be used again. This lid understands that it will never know the temperature of a freezer, and it doesn’t pretend to.
Also, it doesn’t have that flimsy plastic sheet over the top that you either have to take your teeth to or stab with a spoon wondering why you didn’t also grab a fork when you were in the kitchen. I don’t know if this is psychological, or because the ice cream is made and packaged locally in Manhattan Beach. What I note about these two things is that in the same style as the writing on the container, Afters knows its audience.
I know that the other late night DoorDash dwellers are catching on because just this week I saw a few of the flavors were sold out. How many doors in Los Angeles are also ordering pints of ice cream late at night? Using DoorDash as a measuring tool, it would appear that there are enough customers to sell out Saigon Coffee and Butter Cookie.
This is a $10 pint of ice cream and it’s selling out on an app that delivers it to your door at any hour of the night. It says a lot about the brand, but it also says a lot about the demographic. This top tier pint will sell out before Ben & Jerry’s and even Tillamook. How picky am I about ice cream? I used to DoorDash from Handel’s. Now? For a bit less than the Handel’s sundae, I can grab a pint directly from DoorDash.
I’m an elder millennial that has been made happy because an over-priced item of food has been packaged in a way that makes me feel like I’m making an elevated purchase. What psychobabble from MTV did I absorb in my childhood that I feel the need to consume empty calories in a way that I’m not reminded of what I’m doing? An entire industry has gotten us, and I can’t figure out just when it happened. Weren’t we supposed to bake our own sourdough and stay organic? A black container with a professional font has me eating ice cream again like I still have a gallbladder. It’s also gotten me to agree to small purchases on DoorDash, which I gave up two years ago.
Coffee and cookie butter packaged like beauty products has gotten me back on an app I swore off and paying premium prices for an item of food that has turned into a household staple where it was once just something I got from time-to-time. What do I think happened? In some corporate meeting, the suits that get me to purchase a facial cleanser because it comes in a glass bottle and is named after a goddess from a temple that’s been gone for a few millennia turned to the food suits and said, “you know, if you put it in a container that looks like our packaging, they’ll add it to their cart.” And just like that, someone who only bought the quart of Breyer’s when it was on sale, now pays $10 a pint plus delivery for Afters ice cream.
The ice cream is delicious, but they so pulled me in through the branding.