He says that when he got in trouble at his Catholic grade school, which was often, and his punishment was to spend recess in the chapel, he’d read the Bible. Lindsay Fendt/The Tico Times If ‘divine inspiration’ hits you, take it and runīrenes is a deeply religious man. His story includes lessons for anyone thinking about starting a small - or potentially, one day, large - business. Whether or not Brenes makes it that far with his business, he’s learned a lot in his seven years and four locales in the ice cream trade. “My dream is to compete with Haagan-Daaz or Ben & Jerry’s,” he says. Hershey.īut his reference to Ford is as much an indication of his illusion of grandeur as a hint of his concrete ambitions: Brenes wants to make quality ice cream on a mass scale for the people of Costa Rica and, eventually, the world. political and entrepreneurial history - Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Abe Lincoln, Milton S. Brenes frequently throws out references to the larger-than-life names of U.S. “You guys are meeting Henry Ford,” he says to me and The Tico Times photographer, Alberto Font, at one point in the interview. It’s difficult to understate the confidence Brenes exudes about his product and his business plan. Even if what this 40-year-old, former corporate image consultant was producing wasn’t liquor-spiked, artisanal ice cream, I’d probably buy it anyway - whatever “it” was - because if I didn’t, I’d feel like I was missing out on something. It is now the Tico ice cream maker’s most prized possession. But he made it for Brenes anyway - and charged him what you’d pay for a new sedan. So, apparently, did the Italian manufacturer who finally made him the freezer: He told Brenes he had never made anything so powerful in such a small size.
He says he tried to get what he wanted made in Costa Rica, but local companies wouldn’t even give him a price, saying it was a fool’s request. That, Brenes says, is one of the keys to his product’s high quality.
The ice cream freezer, which isn’t much bigger than a standard home refrigerator, has three compressors, which allows it to freeze whatever is inside really fast. He then takes me directly to what he calls his “Ferrari” - a freezer he had made specially by an Italian company that he found out about through an online ice cream making forum (yes, those exist). He apologizes for the mess and says he plans to move his operation soon to a bigger kitchen. Though not today, because Brenes won’t let anyone watch him make ice cream - not even his girlfriend. With the last thrust, it should be ice cream making time.
As I walk in the door of the home-office-ice cream factory that Rodrigo Brenes shares with his architect girlfriend, he’s intensely waiving his imaginary conductor’s baton at the last notes of Pavorroti’s “Figaro” emanating from his computer.
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