Quality drives family ice cream business

Grycan is an ice cream parlour-café chain and the leader in the family take home ice cream market in Poland. Over 150 parlours are located in malls, shopping districts and popular tourist destinations all over the country and the brand is a supplier to high-end hotels and restaurants. Its own ice cream production facility produces over 60 flavours of traditional ice cream in addition to fruit sorbets and yogurt ice cream.

The secret behind Grycan ice cream is the finest ingredients – cream, egg yolks, sugar, fruits, delicacies, and chocolate. But these ingredients are not the only secret. Grycan makes its ice cream with passion and with respect for traditions passed down for generations to bring customers joy in various memorable moments in life. The brand is the family’s own name and their motto is quality, quality and once more quality. As the number one brand in the take home ice cream market in Poland, Grycan reaches customers in both small, neighborhood shops and large shopping malls, as well as Poland’s best restaurants and hotels.   

In the middle of the twentieth century, Józef Grycan and his wife Weronika moved to Wroclaw where they opened an ice cream parlour on the town square. Wanting to continue the tradition, their son, Zbigniew learned the craft and completed an apprenticeship at the Bristol Hotel in Warsaw where he met his future wife, Elżbieta – his master’s daughter. Today, he and his wife Elżbieta run the company together with their daughter Małgorzata and with support from their other daughter Magdalena. With a combination of passion, business sense and ability to listen to and understand consumers, they have built a national brand and established one of Europe’s largest family-run chains of parlours and cafés. In 2004, Grycan introduced its own ice cream to the market by drawing on experience and recipes passed down over generations.  

“Without any exception, we value quality, quality and once more quality.”

“We are always faithful towards traditional craft, focusing on natural ingredients, and we blend our ice cream with various delicacies. Such an approach combined with masterful usage of modern technological solutions allows us to constantly develop flavour portfolio, which guarantees the company’s success. On each stage of production, without any exception, we value quality, quality and once more quality,” said Zbigniew Grycan.

As one of the top-selling Polish brand of take home ice cream in the country, Grycan prides itself on the perfected preparation process using carefully selected ingredients from proven suppliers. The basic ice cream mix consists of cream, eggs yolks, sugar, milk and flavouring, fruits, delicacies and chocolate. The mixture is pasteurized, homogenized and cooled to form a homogenous, perfectly smooth texture. Fresh fruit, dried fruit or nuts are added and the mixture undergoes a cooling process. The fruit and nuts are prepared using traditional methods of manually peeling, chopping and squeezing to obtain the highest quality and best taste. Using a modern, efficient packaging line, the ice cream is poured into containers and cooled again to a lower temperature. Before the ice cream is sent out for shipment, it undergoes quality control tests by the laboratory to ensure each batch meets Grycan’s trademark quality standards.  

“We want it to make our customers remember the flavours from their childhood,” said Elżbieta Grycan. The best-selling  flavours in Poland and abroad are: vanilla, chocolate or strawberry ice cream. Grycan also offers more sophisticated, original flavors such as orange, almond in chocolate, white chocolate, halvah and tiramisu. The most popular sorbet flavors are mango, raspberry, strawberry, and lemon. The Grycan family invents new flavors such as rose, gingerbread, chocolate with mint, cinnamon, cranberry. Rather than following trends, the pioneers sets trends themselves. The retail sales offering includes take home ice cream, select sorbets and yogurt ice cream in two different sizes: 500 ml cups and 125 ml cups with a spoon that are known as impulse-purchased treats. The secret behind the ice cream is using the finest ingredients with respect to tradition. The family business exports quality ice cream to 12 countries in Europe and Asia with plans to further develop the Grycan brand abroad.