Ten years ago, Annie and Sam moved to Dorset and bought a house with an old, dilapidated market garden. It was so overgrown with raspberries that Sam had to trim a path through just to reach them.
They'd arrived with four young children and an abundance of fruit nobody quite knew what to do with. Annie was looking for something to turn her hand to. Between the raspberries, the extraordinary local dairy, and — as it happened — a gelato-making course in Italy, an idea quietly fell into place.
The first sorbet
It began before there was any thought of a business. Annie took the raspberries from the garden, found a sorbet recipe in an old Margaret Costa cookbook — raspberries, sugar, water, a little lemon juice — and made something extraordinary.
That first batch taught her the thing that still runs through everything Baboo makes: really good ingredients give you a really good outcome. It sounds simple. A decade later, it's still the whole philosophy.
The early days were modest. One machine, one glass freezer, a 1,000 square foot unit at Pineapple Business Park. Annie remembers roasting rhubarb for sorbet and squeezing blood oranges by the crate. She also remembers the phone call from a customer ordering 40 boxes, and not being able to imagine how on earth they'd ever manage it.
Ten years on
These days, Baboo produces pallet loads from a 10,000 square foot site, with a bigger team and a lot more machines. The flavours have grown from the original handful — vanilla, chocolate, salted caramel and the fruit sorbets — into a constantly evolving range, including Annie's Specials inspired by whatever wonderful ingredient turns up next.
But the thing that hasn't changed is the one that started it all. Every batch is still made by hand. The ingredients are still the best that can be found, whether that's organic milk from a herd up the road or pistachios sourced from a small farm at an ice cream fair in Italy. And the quality has never, not once, been allowed to slip.
From a garden full of raspberries to ten years of small-batch gelato. We think that's worth celebrating.
See how we're celebrating 10 years →
— Annie, Sam and the Baboo team
