“The least we can do is make sure Canadians can still afford ice cream”: The CEO of Chapman’s on why the company is freezing its prices

Like many Canadian companies, Chapman’s—an ice cream brand based out of Markdale, Ontario—is feeling the burn of the tariffs imposed by Donald Trump. The family-run company, which has previously relied on US suppliers for many key ingredients like nuts and fruit, has spent the past few weeks sourcing new contracts with European companies. Recently, Chapman’s announced a plan to freeze the prices of its products until the end of the year despite tariff-induced cost increases on its end. “Life is hard enough these days,” says CEO Ashley Chapman. “The least we can do is make sure Canadians can still afford ice cream.” Here, he tells us about the flavours most affected by tariffs, a just-launched (and perfectly timed) butter tart creation and why consumers need to watch out for companies trying to fake their “made in Canada” status.

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You were born into an ice cream dynasty. Tell me about Chapman’s origin story. My parents, David and Penny Chapman, founded the company in 1973, with the dream of working for themselves. They had six employees when they started. Today, we employ over 800 people—approaching 900—but back in those days, most ice cream companies opened up scoop shops to go after highway traffic during the summers. My parents decided they weren’t going to do that. Their business plan was based on selling to retailers only. They started with 15 flavours, which is a variety that we take for granted these days—back then, Neapolitan was a mind-bending innovation.

Was being an iconic Canadian brand part of the plan back then? No. My parents had a single-word mission statement in those early days: survive. They worked hard, they made good products and Canadians embraced them.

Is there a flavour we embrace above all others? It’s Canada—we’re a vanilla country. If you look at the Nielsen sales data for ice cream in Canada, 12 out of the top 20 products are vanilla.

I had no idea. Are American consumers also Team Vanilla? I believe American ice cream consumers are a little more adventurous.

Speaking of our neighbours to the south, when did you first get the sense that Trump was going to be a problem for your business? In the first four years of his administration, there was a lot of talk of tariffs, but there were also some adults in the room who steered him away from doing anything too stupid. His rhetoric during the 2024 campaign seemed to have a different flavour than the first time, but we were still skeptical and thought they might just be hollow threats. Now we know that was not the case.

Can you explain exactly how the tariffs affect your business? We don’t sell a lot of our product in the US, so what hits us is the retaliatory tariffs. During the first round, we felt the pinch. That was mostly focused on red states, so for example, we have always imported pecans from Georgia, but we get our almonds from California. But the next round of retaliatory tariffs will be applied to a much broader range of American products coming in. That said, we can always negotiate another pecan contract from Europe instead of Georgia, and we can buy stabilizers in Europe that are the same as the ones we currently get from the States. Our true concern is Canadian dairy and the supply system, which Trump seems to have on his agenda.

For those of us who need a dairy economics refresher… We’re very happy with the current supply management system that limits foreign competition for Canadian dairy farmers. It’s not perfect, but it gives small family farms the opportunity to stay in business and feed themselves—luxuries like that. These tariffs are eventually going to affect those farmers, and that affects the entire dairy industry, which means the cost of Canadian dairy will rise.

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Earlier this month, you announced a plan to freeze prices and absorb the costs of Trump’s tariffs through the end of the year. What prompted that move? We’re also concerned about the impacts this will all have on average Canadians. Food insecurity was already an unacceptable problem in Canada—tariffs are just going to make everything worse. It’s going to be bad for everybody, so when my family got together, we thought, Okay, the very least we can do is take this hit so that Canadians can still afford to enjoy ice cream.

How much of a hit are we talking? If the next round of tariffs take effect on April 2, which is what Trump is threatening at the moment, 25 to 30 per cent of my margin for the year will evaporate. Ice cream is not a high-margin business to begin with.

You mentioned that nuts are now a problem. What else? We’ve always sourced our fruit from the US. Canada’s domestic fruit industry has taken a hit in the past couple of decades, and we don’t do a lot of fruit processing. We all love Ontario strawberries, and we buy them fresh during strawberry season—but it turns out that that’s all Ontario does with strawberries. We don’t turn them into by-products like jam or quick-frozen berries that can be incorporated into ice cream. I looked into processing a few years ago: in order to make a 100 per cent Canadian strawberry ice cream, I would have to get a tractor trailer in Ontario, fill it with fresh strawberries, drive them all the way to BC to have them processed, then drive them all the way back. This has been an issue for a while. Now, with the tariffs, it becomes that much more important.

Chapman’s black cherry is my personal favourite. Are the cherries Canadian? No. We don’t produce that volume of black cherries in Canada. We’ve been buying ours from Michigan for many years from the same supplier. Some of our suppliers have been with us for 30 years because they have an excellent product that is affordable and easy to bring across the border. It was never a problem until now.

What are you hearing from your US suppliers? We have not had a single conversation with a business in the US that is supportive of these tariffs. All of our suppliers are angry. They don’t understand why their businesses are being curtailed for the so-called “long-term prosperity of the United States of America.” And I think these businesses are going to suffer in the end. When we find new suppliers, it means signing contracts for two, three, five years. So even if the tariffs go away sooner than later, we will have already signed multi-year agreements with European suppliers, and our American suppliers are still screwed.

Talk about a kick in the nuts. It is what it is. If I’m happy with my new European suppliers, that’s who I’m going to stick with.

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Are you considering coming up with some new CanCon flavours while you figure things out? New flavour development happens around the middle of summer, with new products landing on shelves right around now. So this summer, we’ll be looking at new options for next year. But—and this is a complete fluke—we have just introduced a new quintessentially Canadian flavour: butter tart ice cream. Our R&D department came up with it almost a year ago, and it’s made entirely of Canadian ingredients. We also have a new peach melba flavour—

Made with Ontario peaches? Well, that was the plan, but then we had that early thaw and then a snap freeze, and it killed tons of peach trees. We’re looking for a Canadian peach supplier, but for now they’re coming from Europe.

Some local businesses are reporting a short-term Trump bump because of the Buy Canadian movement. Is that something you’re seeing at Chapman’s? Our sales data doesn’t turn around that quickly, but anecdotally we’ve been bombarded by people sending in photos of the Chapman’s section of their local grocery store with one lonely, slightly damaged two-litre carton left. But I would like to add that Canadians need to pay attention. There are a lot of brands out there—not just ice cream companies—that are wrapping themselves in the Canadian flag, and they are, excuse my language, full of shit. When five per cent of your total business is produced in Canada and the other 95 takes place in the US, that doesn’t make you a Canadian brand. Consumers need to be careful.

This is not the first time Chapman’s has thrown itself into the political fray. You landed on the wrong side of anti-vax protesters during Covid. Which was hilarious because we took a very middle-of-the-road approach. We tried to work with our employees who were taking issue with vaccination—we didn’t fire anybody who refused to get it. And these raving lunatics just came at us.

Are you concerned that your current stance could land you in the crosshairs of the Canadian MAGA crowd? Ninety-nine point nine per cent of our feedback has been very positive, but we do get comments from certain people. One woman told us that she had eight children who love our products but they will never have them again because we just don’t understand how Trump is protecting his country and how Canadians have been abusing America for decades.

Trump has gone on record saying he loves cherry vanilla ice cream. Thoughts? I’m not sure I believe him. It’s hard to trust somebody who doesn’t like dogs. He doesn’t like cats, either.

Chapman’s used to make that Canada-flag brick. Any plans to re-release it as a show of ice cream patriotism? That was discontinued years ago when we stopped using artificial colour in our ice cream. We could probably do something similar, but unfortunately not in time for this summer.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.