Hello. I’m Alan Owen and I’ve been marketing manager at Mayfield since 1999. As a native of Athens, Tennessee and the son of a 40-year Mayfield employee, I grew up with great admiration and respect for this brand and company, and was excited to return to East Tennessee following a 13-year stint with the Campbell Soup Company.

One of the questions I’m asked most frequently is, “How do you come up with new flavors?” It’s actually a very structured process that involves a lot of persons, ranging from company president Scottie Mayfield to consumers like you. By the time the four new feature flavors have been selected, over 500 sets of taste buds have been put to the test!

The selection process begins with the Mayfield ice cream committee, a group of our employees representing many different areas of our company including sales, marketing, production and quality assurance. Between April and June, this 11-person group receives about eight presentations from flavor vendors who are trying in earnest to have their flavor – or flavors – selected for entry into the Mayfield line.

Each vendor samples approximately 8-10 flavors, and the committee rates each on a scale from 1-10. Once the scores from all sampled products are tabulated, the committee meets again to review the scores and pare our finalists down to 10.