Ariel turned a lifelong fascination with cows and farming into a career making sure Stewart’s ice cream factory has the best cookie dough pieces, fruit and pecans she can find.
As a category manager for Stewart’s Shops, Ariel’s job is to search for quality ingredients so the teams who produce our milk and ice cream have the tools they need to please our customers while winning state and national awards along the way.
“My role is not just about eating ice cream, although that is one of my favorite parts of the job, I have to make sure our manufacturing team has fresh, high-quality ingredients and they need everything to arrive on time,” she said.
In a sense, Ariel puts the cookie crumble in Stewart’s Mint Cookie Crumble ice cream.
Not physically. But the Stewart’s manufacturing team and our customers rely on her to make sure we have fresh cookie crumbles so our 400 shops don’t run out of one our most popular ice cream flavors.
How it all started
Ariel, whose family operates a beef and dairy farm, joined Stewart’s 6 years ago.
Her interest in agriculture was inspired in many ways by her grandparents, who were dairy farmers, and the lessons she learned through 4-H. But she had no idea that studying animal science at SUNY Cobleskill and Cornell University would lead her to a career working with ice cream, milk, eggs and other staples of daily life.
“I am a connector. I get to build relationships with our vendors and make sure our manufacturing team has everything that they need to make great milk and ice cream,” Ariel said. “The best part, we are helping our local, family farms, my friends and neighbors, whose dairy farms help us produce the best milk in New York State.”
That is not only Ariel’s strategy, it is the mindset of the entire Stewart’s product development team, as they invent Stewart’s next great milkshake – The Dirt Cake Milkshake. Yes, there will be Gummy worms, Ariel made sure of it.
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