“I grew up in the Midwest, and both my grandmother and mother were great traditional cooks,” Sheri Tate explains. “Then when I was in high school, my father was transferred to Japan, and our family began traveling internationally. That changed a lot of things, including my mother’s cooking. Her creativity was sparked, and she tried all sorts of gourmet dishes. Now she’s known for her dinner parties!”
When asked where the idea for combining ice cream and alcohol came from, Sheri relates that when she was young, her mother would sometimes prepare a special dessert for Sheri and her brother. “She would top a scoop of vanilla ice cream with the tiniest dollop of Crème de Menthe or Chambord liqueur.”
This memory stayed in Sheri’s mind throughout a career in start-up technology companies. “ I knew I wanted to eventually have my own company, and I would rack my brain to think of an innovative product or service. At first I was thinking just in the technology field, but one day I was reminiscing about the ice cream treat my mother made for me, and I wondered why no one was producing ice cream blended with alcoholic beverages. They go so well together.”
In 2006 Sheri bought a home ice cream maker and started experimenting by making Praline Irish Cream, using Baileys Irish Cream liqueur and chunks of candied pecan pralines. “I loved it, my friends all loved it, and it’s still the most popular flavor I make!”
Other flavor experiments followed, and soon Sheri was taking on the challenge of making her ice creams in larger quantities. She found space to rent in a commercial kitchen, and the owner generously consulted with her, teaching her the tricks of the trade and helping her to find ingredient suppliers.
When she was satisfied that she had enough experience and knowledge, she launched her business full time. The name Silver Moon Desserts was the result of “a lot of brainstorming,” Sheri says. “We wanted to convey that it is a distinctive dessert, sophisticated and elegant.”
The joy of the business for Sheri is that she is able to fulfill her vision of the kind of company she wants to build. Having worked in a number of different environments, she knows that the kind of corporate culture she enjoys working in herself is one that values people. “Silver Moon Desserts is creative, it’s my own, and I look forward to building a company where people love to work and find the same satisfaction in the quality that I do.”
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