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Two sisters are disrupting the whipped cream space, one fresh flavor at a time, with their Whipnotic brand.
For sibs Tracy Luckow and Lori Gitomer, whipped cream has always been more than a topping on waffles or hot chocolate. Instead of an accessory to all of their foods, it served as a group of its own, often with Gitomer ordering foods based on if she could add whipped cream to them or not. While on a shopping trip together, they noticed that their favorite aisle since childhood seemed stagnant.
“The only part of the grocery store that kind of looked the same as when we were kids was where the whipped cream was,” says Luckow, a resident of Briarcliff Manor. “The can has not changed. Ingredients have barely changed. Just nothing really seemed to be updated about whipped cream.” With Luckow spending over 20 years in the food industry and Gitomer having a successful career in sales and the media world, the reinvention of whipped cream felt like a mission they were meant to accomplish.
The tinder of Whipnotic’s idea sparked in 2019, but the sisters didn’t begin their prototyping until mid-2020, printing the first iterations of their technology on 3-D printers that offices pivoting to working from home no longer needed. Whipnotic officially hit supermarket shelves in June of 2021. Now, you can find the eye-catching can of fresh flavors in 250 grocery stores across 22 states, including all of the DeCicco & Sons locations in Westchester. “It was really important to me to be present in Westchester,” says Luckow. After approaching Joe DeCicco about their whipped cream, he took the product immediately. “DeCiccos is so special for me because it’s literally the store I shop in.”
Less than 12% of patents filled in the world have women listed as inventors. For the sisters and the handful of women they partnered with, having their product patented is exciting, but having an all-female team listed as the inventors is what’s most special. “We are very rooted in who we are,” says Luckow. “We want to continue to encourage girls throughout the country to keep dreaming and to put their dreams on paper and to invent things and be entrepreneurial.”
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