Ice cream fan has a scoop

There are ice cream lovers, and then there's Jon Gordon of Rancho Mirage.

Told by his doctor during a routine physical examination in August 2006 that he was "pre-diabetic" and dangerously close to developing type-2 diabetes, Gordon was ordered to drop his pint-a-day ice cream habit immediately.

Gordon, 57, a former communications and marketing executive and movie producer, suddenly needed a substitute for what had been his favorite food since he was a boy in Brooklyn.

So Gordon began eating a dozen popsicles a day, but they turned out to be a poor substitute for ice cream.

"By the time I got to December the popsicles weren't doing it for me anymore, and I told my wife I had to find something else," said Gordon, a self-described "type A" personality who stays fit by swimming 40 laps a day most of the year. "I got to thinking about all of the sugar-free products out there, and I started to wonder why no one had ever tried to make sugar-free ice cream."

So Gordon bought an ice cream maker large enough to make three quarts at a time and began scouring Coachella Valley grocery stores for ingredients. Sometimes he would stay up to 2 or 3 a.m., trying to find the mix that would create an ice cream without sugar - natural or otherwise - that tasted like conventional ice cream.

"I don't even want to think about how much I spent on ingredients," said Gordon, who developed his recipes by himself. "I had no idea how to make ice cream before I started doing this."

By February, Gordon knew he had created something that could work outside of his own kitchen. "I thought, this could be huge," he said. "I got online and found out how many diabetic and obese people there are, and I knew a lot of them would like an ice cream they could eat without damaging their health. But it's the truth that I didn't start this for the masses. I started it for myself, and then I realized that it could do people some good."

Gordon, who estimates that he has spent about $500,000 of his own money developing his ice cream, has six people working for him.

He presented his product to officials with Stater Bros. and Albertsons last fall.

By the middle of April, Gordon will have launched Clemmy's Ice Cream, named after his late cat, whose picture is featured on the back of every carton. Clemmy's Ice Cream will feature five flavors - chocolate, vanilla bean, coffee, toasted almond and chocolate mint swirl - and will be sold in quarts only for $6 each.

Two major grocery chains have agreed to sell Clemmy's at heir stores as soon as it's released,. Gordon and his chief executive officer, Tom Lavan, are working on several specialty products, including a chocolate bar and an ice cream sandwich, that should be ready this summer.

All five of Clemmy's flavors should be on sale in about 1,600 stores nationwide by the end of May.

"We want to be on the shelf right between Ben & Jerry's and Haagen-Dazs ," Gordon said. "I have enormous respect for what Ben & Jerry's has done with their product. Those are the people we want to compete with."

Lavan, a North Carolina resident and a consultant to the ice cream industry, met Gordon six months ago through a mutual friend at Yarnell's Ice Cream in Arkansas, where Clemmy's Ice Cream will be manufactured.

Clemmy's is sugar-free because it uses cream instead of milk, Lavan said, although he declined to give away trade secrets.

"Milk has natural sugar, which is why other ice creams aren't sugar-free," he said. "They're made with milk, so they have to have some sugar in them. Some of them don't add sugar, but that doesn't make them sugar-free."

Clemmy's won't be marketed as ice cream's answer to health food, Lavan said.

"It does have some fat and cholesterol in it," Lavan said. "We aren't trying to be all things to all people, and we aren't saying it's perfect. Probably the biggest obstacle we'll have to overcome is the fact that a lot of people have an aversion to anything sugar-free. They think it leaves an aftertaste, which our ice cream doesn't."

To combat that perception, Lavan plans to hold sample demonstrations at stores, and he plans to hire a company that will sell his ice cream to hospitals, rest homes and other elements of the health care industry.

"This is a unique product," Lavan said. "There are so many people with health problems who would like to eat ice cream but can't."