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Apart from his Portsmouth practice, he was a staff optometrist
for the Hartford Whalers hockey team and the U.S. Olympic
hockey team. After buying Annabelle's, he managed to run both
it and his practice for two years before finally selling his
interest in the practice. "I was pretty tired all the time
back in those days. My golf handicap went from 12 to 18.
If optometry and ice cream seems an incongruous
succession of careers, it doesn't phase Palosky. In fact,
owning Annabelle's is something of a dream deferred for him.
"When I first came up here I looked at a location right next
door. I was ready to sign a lease and put in an old-fashioned
ice cream shop. Two days later, Alex David introduced himself
to me, and talked to me about his idea." Palosky read the
sequence of events as an omen, leased the Ceres Street storefront
to David, and Annabelle’s rapidly became a Portsmouth landmark.
After 11 years under his watch, David handed
the reigns to Palosky. "As soon as the company became available,
I purchased it." says Palosky. "There isn't much I really
miss about the practice. I did what I wanted to do as an optometrist,
and I still see all my old customers - only now they come
see me for ice cream."
Palosky's approach to Annabelle's will be
to address the wholesale market, and the ice cream vendor
market exclusively leaving the manufacturers like Häagen Dazs
and Ben and Jerry’s to battle it out in the grocery stores.
'I don't want to distribute my, ice cream to a Mom and Pop
store that sells it in cones, and have the same thing available
in a 7 Eleven store right around the corner. It would be unfair
to our vendors. We have our niche right now, and we are felt
throughout the industry within that niche.'
Like Ben and Jerry’s 's and Häagen Dazs, Annabelle's
is a super premium grade of ice cream. Super premium ice cream
criteria requires a 16 percent butter fat content, all natural
flavors and no more than a 35 percent overrun. Overrun refers
to the amount of air contained in a sample of ice cream. Typical
ice cream manufacturers use 50 gallons of air to produce 100
gallons of ice cream. Annabelle's uses 35 gallons of air to
manufacture the same 100 gallons. "I'd pump in less air if
I could, but you couldn't scoop it out if it were frozen.
You'd break your wrist every time you tried to dip it." Palosky
says. There is no skimping on the goodies at Annabelle's either.
For every 100 gallons of chocolate chip with Kahlua ice cream.
Palosky and company use 75 pounds of chocolate chips. For
those readers who cannot locate their conversion tables immediately,
that's an ounce and a half of chocolate in every pint.
Annabelle's next business venture is super
premium ice cream pies. Palosky recently purchased equipment
that will form pie crusts, cut the three-pound pies into slices,
and wrap each slice individually. This provides portion control
to the shops and restaurants buying the pies and makes inventory
and profit margins much more visible to the client than if
the pies were shipped uncut. Palosky is still putting the
finishing touches on the box design but he expects that the
pies should be reads to ship by the end of June.
Palosky and his wife Linda are thankful to
live on the Seacoast and have no intention of moving or getting
out of the ice cream business. "Ice cream makes people happy
This is a great job. I want to thank Portsmouth for making
Annabelle's a success. I realize that in order to get down
to Ceres Street, you probably have to pass several other ice
cream shops. We really appreciate it."
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