PORTLAND — If you were looking for another reason to glare at the billionaires flying first class on Alaska Airlines cross country flights, here you go: Starting Saturday, they will be treated to Salt and Straw in the air, and you will not.
The Portland-based ice creamery will launch their new single serving scoops, with packaging created by Portland designer Ziba Design on cross country flights. The ice cream will be delivered twice a week to Alaska’s kitchens and kept cold using dry ice during flights.
“Our ice cream is taking flight,” Salt and Straw CEO and co-founder Kim Malek said Wednesday. “We’re so excited.”
“Nowadays, flying is known to be harder and harder,” she said. “I personally feel like over the years Alaska Airlines has moved in the opposite direction.”
When asked if ice cream would ever be available to the everyman in the economy class, she said, “That’s everyone’s dream.”
But, she added they need to “walk before they run,” meaning Alaska and Salt and Straw need to iron out how to serve a small amount of ice cream effectively in the sky, before they can deliver it everyone.
Head Ice Cream Maker, and Kim Malek’s cousin, Tyler Malek, said he was excited about the challenge of finding the right flavors for airline travelers.
“Once you’re up in the air, your palate is kind of muted a little bit,” he said Wednesday.
His goal with the new project was, he said, to “make sure that our ice cream still has a punch” even up in the clouds.
The main flavors people crave when flying, he said, are salt and acid. So he settled on two flavors to start with: meyer lemon custard with blueberries, which is currently only available in southern California, and sea salt with caramel ribbons.
The lemon ice cream will be available on westbound flights and the sea salt will be available on eastbound flights. Later this summer, they will switch out one of the flavors for a toasted white chocolate with a fresh strawberry jam.
