About Us
Jessie King (known affectionately as Gaga) was the inspiration for the lemon sherbetter now being made by her son Jack and grandson Jim. She was known for her sense of humor as well as her sherbetter.
Both the name and the recipe for the creamy sherbet come from the Founder, Jim King's grandmother, Jessie McRae King, whom Jim called “Gaga” as a toddler. After spending about 3 years at Channel 12, Jim King was without a job when new management took over. His family wanted to stay in Rhode Island and he soon found freelance work at NECN.
Looking for something more Jim found Gaga's thumb-worn 3-5 index card with her lemon sherbet recipe.
A Family History of Frozen Delights!
—Circa 1948, Melrose, Massachusetts.
This picture was sent to me from my brother Bob. For five years I drove this ice cream truck, which I borrowed each summer from a young man, Manny Ginsberg, in Revere. He had his own little company, with about 12 trucks, and was competing with the Good Humor fleet. He was only about 20 years old and I was 18 years old. Every morning I'd wash my truck and drive to Revere to pick up popsicles, chocolate covers, ice cream sandwiches, etc. and go off on my route, which got bigger each summer.
This little truck helped me work my way through both Northfield-Mount Hermon and also Colby College in Waterville, Maine. What fun to see this old picture !! It sure brought back great memories.
Boppi (Jack King - Gaga's son)
While Gaga’s extended family has always known the product as sherbet, Gaga’s technically falls somewhere in the icy void between the technical definitions of ice cream and sherbet. While sherbet is defined as having 2 percent butterfat or less, an ice cream carries 10 percent or more. Still, Gaga’s with its 3.5 grams of total butterfat is a much different choice than the butterfat grams for the premium ice creams of Ben & Jerry’s - thus the label’s “SherBetter” distinction.
“This is one of those things where what I’m working for is mine and it allows me to see my kids,” said King, remembering his grandmother, who died in 1993. “She’d definitely be proud of us.”
The operation is truly a family business, from his wife putting the finishing touches on the product’s website (www.gogagas.com), where the stores carrying the sherbet are listed), to the couples son and daughter slapping labels on sleeve after sleeve of empty pint containers. And King’s father, Jack, who lives just outside Boston, is a huge part of the in-store samplings so key to generating the word-of-mouth advertising the product depends on.
Jim King, president and CEO of Warwick-based Gaga's Inc.
The Kings lucked out in the early months, picking up a 10-gallon batch freezer for $2,800 at an IRS auction in Providence (the equipment usually costs $20,000 brand new) and then found a filler that allows up to 300 pints to be filled an hour. King now makes the sherbet at Bliss Brothers Co. in Attleboro once or twice a week and rents out unutilized freezer space. In the early stages, he was mixing the sherbet in metal tins and slapping it into pints with a spatula.
The batch freezer used to make GAGA'S™ Original Lemon SherBetter.
The next step was getting the product onto store shelves. After learning that a single facing in Stop & Shop (placing Gaga’s on a single shelf in 300-plus stores, with no guarantees on the length of time it could hold the spot), would cost him $65,000, King knew the chains were not the way to go on a tight budget. Instead, he and his father began targeting independent markets, which want to be able to compete with larger retailers by offering unique products.
“My head’s not above water yet,” said King, of investing in the business. “But I can see the light as more and more people try it.” King pointed to Ben & Jerry’s selling the public on the concept of a high-quality, premium pint. He said without that company, he could never sell Gaga’s product for a profit. The pints retail from between $3.59 and $5.50 a pint (in Boston), and are usually under $4 throughout Rhode Island.