Ari Cohen at TEDxBayArea

Andrew and Ari Cohen grew up without one of life's simple pleasures: eating ice cream. Lactose intolerant, the two brothers had to avoid dairy. So it is only fitting that they have started Mr. Dewie's, an Oakland-based company that uses almond milk to create a frozen dessert that's an ice cream alternative. They've entered a market that can be chilly to competitors -- the shelves at natural and many upscale groceries such as Whole Foods are stocked with all kinds of nondairy frozen desserts -- but at a time when almond milk is soaring in popularity. "We knew all along that our product was a niche product, but we didn't realize and are very happy to have realized that this niche is pretty vast," Andrew Cohen said. The company grew out of a quest by Ari Cohen, 49, of Oakland, to find a dairy substitute he could pour over his hot breakfast cereal. The result was a liquid concoction made from dates and pecans, which he began selling at a local farmers market last year. "It was good, but it was like this would be fantastic if it was frozen," said Andrew Cohen, 46, of Berkeley. So Ari returned to the kitchen to come up with the product they sell today. "Everything kind of led to going with almonds, almond being the best flavor and medium for this," Andrew Cohen said. It's a real hands-on operation: With the help of an Italian gelato machine, the brothers make the product in a rented commercial kitchen in West Oakland and deliver it to a growing roster of East Bay stores. The almond milk is derived from blanched, California-grown organic almonds that are made into a paste and mixed with filtered water. "We make the almond milk. We add all the ingredients into a bucket. We pour it into the (gelato) machine. We package it up, we do everything by hand," Andrew Cohen said.

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