Why Tyra Banks opened Smize and Dream in Australia
From the catwalk to the culinary world, supermodel Tyra Banks has dished on her latest business venture in Australia with her new flagship ice cream shop.
Banks has been secretly living incognito in Sydney from January while she worked on setting up her start-up business. She has documented her experiences of Australian shops – even calling Kmart “fancy.”
The America’s Next Top Model host made a surprise career pivot, opening Smize and Dream at Darling Harbour.
Since its launch in June, the brand has taken the dessert world by storm, thanks to the star’s bold creation of hot ice cream.
During a recent interview with 2GB’s Afternoons with Michael McLaren, the glamour girl revealed her inspiration behind the dessert company.
“I’m obsessed with ice cream. My mum and I bonded over the years over ice cream because she was a single mum,” the 52-year-old said on the program.
“She had a lot of jobs and she didn’t really get to spend that much time with me and my brother on the weekdays, because she was at all of these second and third jobs.
“But Friday night was our time to bond over ice cream, and we would eat in the car on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles.
“She would talk about her stories and her crazy bosses, and how she just was working so hard so that we can get another apartment that had another bedroom, so that she can have a bedroom, stop sleeping on the couch, and over the years, that just was how we bonded.
“So I created an ice cream company in homage to my mama, all about dreams, smizes me, which means smiling with your eyes. And dreams, is my mum.”
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Tyra Banks at the launch of her Darling Harbour ice cream store Smize & Dream. Picture: Jonathan Ng
The TV personality said what makes her ice cream different from other brands is that all the Smize and Dream’s tubs are “a hidden smize surprise.”
“Like a beautiful, handmade truffle candy tucked at the bottom and you have to dig like a hidden treasure to find it, and it represents your dream,” she said.
“We have all different flavours. Imagine we have a flavour called Strawberry birthday cake. We have a strawberry birthday cake smize surprise.
“We have a Tyra’s favourite, which is mine, like a butter pecan flavour, and then we have a butter pecan flavour Tyra favourite smize surprise
“So most of our ice cream flavours have an accompanying smize surprise.”
The TV personality said what makes her ice cream has “a hidden smize surprise.” Picture: Julian Andrews
Banks revealed why she moved down under and chose Sydney as the site for her first store.
“I started this ice cream company, and we started producing in Melbourne, because we had some accounts for cruises that were leaving Australia and Asia, “she said.
“We started working with a manufacturing company that was co-manufacturing our products, our recipes, and putting them on those cruises. It made more sense to do it from here, carbon footprint.
“We were coming here a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. And I had to reformulate it. I had to reformulate my ice cream recipes, because your milk is so pure and different.
“I was like, I taste the grass, I taste the cow. Wait, so I have to reformulate everything. It was so pure.
“We just kept coming back and coming back and coming back. And my family one day, we were like, You know what? This place makes us happy. There’s something special.
“We decided to move, but first we weren’t sure, so we jumped around. We did the Gold Coast, we did Victoria.
“We did kind of jumped around and then decided on Sydney because of the locals and the tourism, which was important.”
Banks and her partner Louis Bélanger-Martin decided to ditch Los Angeles and move to Australia full time with her son York Banks Asla, 9, whom she shares with ex Erik Asla.
Tyra Banks and her mum Carolyn London. Picture: Richard Dobson
According to The Daily Telegraph, the entrepreneur has been involved in every detail of Smize & Dream, working around the clock ahead of its launch.
“I’m tired but it’s a beautiful kind of tired because when you have a start-up, you’re HR, you’re operations, you’re business development, you’re strategy, you’re janitorial, custodial, you’re every single thing and it’s tiring, but I’m hoping that there’s a rainbow at the end of this yellow brick road because it’s a bumpy road, it really is,” she told the outlet.
“I always say that when your name is on the door, I get the accolades that I don’t deserve.
I’ve got chefs in the kitchen – yes, I am telling them what I think the recipe should be, but it’s their interpretation of my vision. I get a lot of that credit.
“But also, when your name is on the door, you get a lot of stuff that you had nothing to do with but because your name is on the door, you get saddled with that and so those are the things that keep me awake at night – making sure that the things that we get the credit for are fantastic.
“Even if I’m getting credit and my team is doing it and making sure that we try to avoid as many pitfalls as possible.”
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