By Donna Cornelius
The last two Aprils have been milestone months for Ryan and Geri-Martha O’Hara.
The young couple got engaged April 12, 2013. A year later, they married on that same date.
This year, the O’Haras will be working during their anniversary weekend. But they’re not complaining.
On April 11, the opening day of Pepper Place Saturday Market in downtown Birmingham, they’ll be selling handcrafted ice cream made by their company, Big Spoon Creamery.
Starting their own food business was a dream for the couple, Ryan said.
“We had a solid idea of how we wanted to do this,” he said. “We saw something Birmingham didn’t have yet. And we don’t have any kids, so we thought, it’s never going to get easier to do this than it is right now.”
He and Geri-Martha, who live in Bluff Park, started Big Spoon Creamery last July.
In addition to Pepper Place, the O’Haras take their ice cream cart to pop-up events and special occasions such as Trim Tab Brewing Co.’s recent anniversary party. Big Spoon’s next pop-up will be April 4 at Tip Top Grill in Hoover.
Food has figured in the couple’s relationship from the start. They met while both were working for well-known Birmingham chef and restaurant owner Frank Stitt.
Geri-Martha, who was born in Cullman, went to Vestavia Hills High School and the University of Alabama. After graduating from UA, where she studied entrepreneurship, she realized she wanted a career in food, she said.
After working at several Birmingham restaurants, Geri-Martha did internships in New York at high-profile restaurants such as Jean-Georges and Le Bernadin and with the Daniel Boulud group under Dominique Ansel. She began working in the pastry department for Stitt’s restaurants about five years ago, she said.
That’s when she crossed paths with her future husband.
Ryan grew up in Pelham and played baseball at Pelham High School. He attended Central Alabama Community College and later transferred to Auburn University. He’s now sous chef at Stitt’s Chez Fonfon.
“I started working in restaurants when I was at Auburn,” he said. “I liked cooking. I moved back to Birmingham and thought about going to culinary school but landed at Bottega.”
Ryan said it took a while for him to get up the nerve to ask Geri-Martha out.
“And then she shot me down the first two times I asked her,” he said.
Both have an affinity for ice cream, they said.
Geri-Martha took a break from her job with Stitt to help a friend start a catering company, she said.
“I told Chef that what I missed most while I was gone was making ice cream,” she said.
Ryan said his love for ice cream – and even the company’s name – comes from his childhood.
“Ice cream was a comfort thing,” he said. “I always spent a good part of the summer at my grandparents’ house. After every meal, we’d have either ice cream or milkshakes. And I’d want the biggest spoon I could find.”
What sets their ice cream apart, the O’Haras said, is its ingredients.
“We get milk, cream and buttermilk from Wright Dairy in Alexandria,” Geri-Martha said. “They have the most amazing products anywhere.”
From their work at Bottega and Chez Fonfon, “We formed good relationships with farmers and got to know them by name,” Ryan said.
“We get our citrus – satsumas, Meyer lemons – at Petals from the Past in Jemison,” he said.
They’re wild about the strawberries grown at Trent Boyd Harvest Farm in Cullman and herbs from Michael Dean Farms in Vincent, they said.
“Using these kinds of products allows us to highlight what’s going on in Alabama,” Ryan said.
While some flavors are seasonal, others are staples on the Big Spoon menu – vanilla, chocolate, and Peanut Butter Cookie Dough, with peanut butter incorporated into the ice cream as well as the dough.
“We use Valrhona chocolate, which is a French premium chocolate, and we make our own marshmallow fluff,” Ryan said.
Big Spoon partners with other Birmingham purveyors to create out-of-the-carton varieties of ice cream.
“We do a coffee almond toffee with Octane coffee and a rye brown with Trim Tab beer,” Ryan said.
In November, the couple added another component to their business. They started an ice cream club. You can buy subscriptions for a month at a time or for longer.
“We weren’t expecting the ice cream club to take off like it did,” Ryan said. “But over the winter, it grew exponentially. It’s $16 a month. You get two flavors, a pint of each, delivered once a month to your home.”
This month, customers got Rocky Ridge Road, a chocolate concoction whose name is a play on that of a familiar Vestavia street. Also offered in March was Ryan’s favorite, Buttermilk Shortbread, made with a citrus cornmeal cookie.
Ryan and Geri-Martha not only deliver the ice cream themselves but make it, package it and promote it through social media. Their business has grown so much that Geri-Martha soon will be leaving her pastry chef position so that she can work full time with Big Spoon, she said.
Ryan said the likely next step is opening a brick-and-mortar store.
“Our end goal is to have a small storefront by sometime next year,” he said. “We want it to be intimate, fun and inviting. But we wanted to create a following first.”
When the O’Haras first began forming their company, they had some supporters, Ryan said.
“We had like a dozen people who wanted to be a part of the company, and all of them had advice,” he said. “Some of them thought we needed a different, more serious name.”
But the couple stuck with Big Spoon Creamery.
“We’re serious about ice cream – but it’s supposed to be fun,” Ryan said.
For more information about Big Spoon Creamery, check it out on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. For ice cream club subscriptions, send an email to HYPERLINK “mailto:[email protected]” [email protected] or call 568-8856.
