She Moved from Toronto. He Moved from Seattle. They Met in Vancouver, Noticed There Was No Good Ice Cream, and Fixed It with a Tricycle.
Ben Ernst and Erica Bernardi launched Earnest Ice Cream in May 2012 with a single tricycle at the Vancouver Farmers Markets. Fourteen years later they have four scoop shops, a wholesale network across Metro Vancouver, and a zero-waste jar return program — all built on the conviction that ice cream should be made from real ingredients, seasonal flavours, and local dairy.
August 11, 2026 · By Justin Plosz · Vancouver, British Columbia · Business · 7 min read read
The Tricycle
In May 2012, Ben Ernst and Erica Bernardi set up an ice cream tricycle at the Vancouver Farmers Markets. It was not a soft opening. It was, at that point, the entirety of Earnest Ice Cream: a tricycle, a small supply of small-batch ice cream, and two friends who believed that Vancouver deserved better than what was available.
They sold out.
This is how most good food businesses begin — not with a press release but with a day when the product runs out faster than anyone expected, and the founders go home knowing they have to make more. The tricycle became the founding symbol of Earnest not because it was a clever marketing device but because it was simply what they had. You start somewhere. You start with what you can carry.
The name — Earnest — was chosen carefully. The dictionary definition: 'serious in intention, purpose, or effort; embodying sincerity.' It is an unusual quality to build a brand around. Most food businesses lead with the product. Earnest led with an attitude toward the work: that making ice cream the slow way, from real ingredients, with care for where things come from, is worth the extra effort and the extra cost. The word earnest captures that without requiring a paragraph to explain it.
What Erica Noticed About Vancouver
Erica Bernardi moved to Vancouver from Toronto in 2010. One of the first things she noticed, in the way that transplants often notice things that locals take for granted, was the number of Dairy Queens.
This was not a complaint. It was an observation about a gap: Vancouver, for all its food-progressive reputation, did not have what she considered a serious local ice cream culture. There were chain brands and convenience-store freezers. There were a few gelato shops. But the kind of small-batch, ingredient-forward, seasonally rotating ice cream that she associated with food cities doing interesting things was largely absent.
She met Ben Ernst — who had come from Seattle, a city with a stronger small-batch food culture — in 2011, a year after she arrived. They became friends, and then business partners. Ernst had a background in food and a conviction that the materials matter: that local dairy from named farms tastes different from industrial dairy, that ice cream made with ripe seasonal fruit tastes different from ice cream made with flavoured extract, and that the gap between the two is not subtle.
The shared observation — that Vancouver's ice cream scene left room for something serious — became the business. Earnest Ice Cream launched a year later.
What Small-Batch Actually Means
Earnest makes its ice cream from scratch. This is not a marketing claim; it is a description of the process. Local dairy comes in, whole seasonal ingredients come in — summer strawberries from the Fraser Valley, stone fruit when it is at peak, roasted nuts prepared in-house, chocolate sourced from makers who care about origin — and ice cream goes out. No flavoured extracts. No industrial stabilizers. No reconstituted fruit concentrate.
Small-batch production means that flavours rotate with the season. The summer menu is not the winter menu. What is available at the scoop shop in August reflects what is actually growing in British Columbia in August, which means that the same flavour in September may taste slightly different than it did in July because the fruit itself is different. This is considered a feature, not a bug.
The original glass jar format — which Earnest has used since its early days — is part of the same philosophy. Glass jars are heavier, more expensive to produce and ship, and require customers to return them to participate in the zero-waste cycle. They are also infinitely reusable, endlessly recyclable, and genuinely better-looking than plastic pints. Earnest chose them not because they were convenient but because they were consistent with the values that shaped every other decision in the business.
Four Scoop Shops
The tricycle led to scoop shops. Earnest now has four of them across Vancouver and the North Shore.
The Fraser Street location — in the Fraserhood neighbourhood of East Vancouver — was among the first permanent retail spaces, and it remains the flagship: a neighbourhood scoop shop in the truest sense, the kind of place where the same people show up on the same days and the staff knows what they usually order. Quebec Street followed, then Frances Street, and then North Vancouver, which brought Earnest across the harbour for the first time and introduced a new set of regulars to what had been a solidly East Van institution.
Each shop operates with the same daily-made production model. Ice cream is made in batches. What is in the case at 5pm may be different from what was in the case at noon. The menu board reflects the day's production, not a permanent fixture. This creates a kind of scarcity that the founders never engineered deliberately — it is simply a consequence of making things the honest way — but which has become part of the Earnest experience for regulars who know to arrive early for the flavours that sell fastest.
The ice cream truck still makes appearances at events and markets. It is, in its way, the descendant of the original tricycle: the same idea in a larger vehicle.
The Zero Waste Journey
Earnest's zero-waste jar return program began as a simple idea: return a glass jar and we will reuse it. Every jar returned keeps one more package out of landfill. It is not complicated. It is not marketed as a lifestyle statement. It is just a loop that the business has always tried to close.
Over fourteen years, the program has become a defining part of Earnest's identity — not because it was positioned that way but because customers chose to make it meaningful. Regulars bring back jars as a matter of routine. People who visit Vancouver and buy Earnest ice cream at a retailer sometimes seek out a scoop shop specifically to return the jar before they leave. The behaviour has become part of the relationship between the brand and the people who buy from it.
The zero waste journey, as the founders call it, extends beyond jar returns. It shapes how they think about packaging at wholesale level, how they source ingredients, and how they operate each shop. It is not a carbon-offset program or a quarterly sustainability report. It is a set of operational decisions made every day, in the kitchen and at the counter, by the same team that has been making ice cream the same way since 2012.
Earnest is the kind of business that is hard to replicate quickly because its values are baked into its process, not grafted onto its marketing. That takes time. It took them fourteen years, a tricycle, four scoop shops, and an enormous quantity of very good ice cream.
Key takeaways
- Earnest Ice Cream was founded in May 2012 by Ben Ernst (from Seattle) and Erica Bernardi (from Toronto) who met in Vancouver and launched the company with a single ice cream tricycle at the Vancouver Farmers Markets.
- The name Earnest comes from its dictionary definition: 'serious in intention, purpose, or effort; embodying sincerity' — a statement of how the founders approach every aspect of the business.
- All Earnest ice cream is made from scratch using local dairy, whole seasonal ingredients, and no industrial shortcuts — flavours rotate with BC's growing seasons.
- The company now operates four scoop shops across Vancouver (Fraser St, Quebec St, Frances St, and North Vancouver) as well as a wholesale network across Metro Vancouver.
- Earnest's zero-waste jar return program — return a glass jar and it will be cleaned and reused — has been a founding value of the business since 2012, not a recent sustainability initiative.
- The original ice cream tricycle still makes appearances at markets and events — the same founding idea, fourteen years on.
Frequently asked questions
- Where are Earnest Ice Cream's scoop shops?
- Earnest Ice Cream has four scoop shops in the Vancouver area: Fraser Street (East Vancouver), Quebec Street, Frances Street, and a North Vancouver location. There is also an ice cream truck that makes appearances at farmers markets and events across Metro Vancouver.
- Who founded Earnest Ice Cream?
- Earnest Ice Cream was founded by Ben Ernst, who came from Seattle, and Erica Bernardi, who moved from Toronto to Vancouver in 2010. They met in Vancouver in 2011 and launched the company together in May 2012, beginning with an ice cream tricycle at the Vancouver Farmers Markets.
- What makes Earnest Ice Cream different from regular ice cream?
- Earnest makes its ice cream from scratch using local dairy, whole seasonal ingredients, and no industrial flavouring agents or stabilizers. Flavours rotate with the season — the summer menu reflects what is actually growing in British Columbia. Their glass jar format supports a zero-waste return program where every returned jar is cleaned and reused.
- What is the Earnest Ice Cream jar return program?
- Earnest's jar return program is simple: return a glass jar and they will clean and reuse it, keeping one more package out of landfill. The program has been part of the business since the early days and has become one of its defining values. Customers can return jars at any Earnest scoop shop location.
- When did Earnest Ice Cream open?
- Earnest Ice Cream launched in May 2012 with an ice cream tricycle at the Vancouver Farmers Markets. The founders, Ben Ernst and Erica Bernardi, sold out on their first weekend. The company has grown steadily since, opening four permanent scoop shops and a wholesale network across Metro Vancouver.
- Does Earnest Ice Cream use local ingredients?
- Yes. Earnest sources local dairy and seasonal ingredients from BC producers. Their flavours rotate with the season to reflect what is actually available — Fraser Valley strawberries in summer, stone fruit at peak harvest, and so on. The commitment to local sourcing is a founding principle, not a recent marketing addition.
← Back to PRC Newsroom · Public Relations Canada
Enable JavaScript to view the interactive version of this page.