Redmond couple brings freeze-dried snacks to over 100 Oregon retailers

Published 9:00 am Wednesday, September 23, 2026

Redmond residents Charlotte and Ryan Alston launched Glacier Gourmet in 2024 to provide healthier snacks for their children and now sell freeze-dried fruits, ice creams and cheesecakes in over 100 locations statewide.

“We freeze-dry ice creams, like what you might get at a science museum as a kid,” Ryan said. “You can take it anywhere, eat it anytime, enjoy some ice cream out in the middle of a desert and it’ll never melt on you. But we took that a step further to offer a gourmet, high-end option to those ice creams.”

Glacier Gourmet offers freeze-dried fruits, ice creams, candies, cheesecakes, pies and cookie doughs ready to eat out of the bag — no water or refrigeration needed. They have about 25 flavors of freeze-dried ice cream. Its best-sellers are the Oregon dark cherry ice cream and marionberry pie ice cream.

Charlotte and Ryan source fresh fruits like strawberries, peaches and marionberries from local farms in Oregon and hand-cut them before freeze-drying.

“We definitely try to stick with Pacific Northwest and Oregon-styled items, which I think has helped out a lot too in growth with local people knowing what a marionberry is, or really wanting to shop close to home,” Ryan continued.

Glacier Gourmet’s freeze-dried products skip the preservatives and are as nutritious as eating it fresh, Ryan added.

From MREs to freeze-dried ice cream

“When we came onto the market, we always had the intention of offering a different product than what was on the market,” Ryan said. “Most freeze-dry companies that are commercial mainstream are doing meals that need to be rehydrated. And most of the time, when people think freeze-dried, their heads either go to MREs or freeze-dried candy.”

Oregon Freeze Dry, which started freeze-drying fruits for cereals and military MREs (meals ready to eat) over 50 years ago, positioned Oregon as a major hub for freeze-drying, a multi-billion dollar global industry. Over time, the demand for foods that can last decades skyrocketed as more people wanted free-dried meals to eat while recreating outdoors, as reported by OPB.

“A lot of people are very active in Central Oregon, so I did feel like it was a perfect place for some of our options in that regard,” Ryan said.

Ryan said he and his wife also saw a lack of transparency in the snack and food industry.

“There’s a lot of snacks on the market that, when you purchase them, you don’t necessarily always know what the ingredients are in the product that you’re given to them,” Ryan said.

All of Glacier Gourmet’s products are packaged in bags with clear fronts.

“Presentation is very key with us,” Ryan continued. “We wanted to bring a home-style, handcrafted like this. We have a black and white bag, and the food is obviously very colorful. There’s no gray area. What you see is what you get. You can see how little to no degradation there is.”

The small-batch producer aims to have a wide variety of products with the highest flavor profiles possible.

“Between all of our machines and our kitchen, we do smaller-run batches so that the quality is maintained throughout the entire process,” Ryan said.

Glacier Gourmet products are available online and in store in about 30 Central Oregon locations, including Newport Avenue Market and Local Acres Marketplace in Bend and M&W Markets in Redmond.

Freeze-drying beans, corn and rhubarb

While the husband and wife are currently operating Glacier Gourmet alone, Ryan and Charlotte may hire staff in the future. Ryan said their customers and three children are the taste-testers when it comes to trying new freeze-dried products.

Freeze-drying first calls for cooking and slicing products, placing them in a frozen chamber to freeze and then vacuuming the air out of the chamber to dehydrate. To freeze-dry their berry cheesecake bites, Ryan and Charlotte hand-cut fresh strawberries, raspberries and blueberries and bake the cheesecake in-house before freeze-drying it.

Ryan said finding new items to freeze-dry “is just throwing a dart at a dartboard and seeing what sticks.”

Some customers have even requested items for Ryan and Charlotte to freeze-dry, including rhubarb, corn and green beans.

“We’re always reiterating and evolving and seeing what we can freeze-dry next,” Ryan said. “After 20 times, 30 times of people asking for something, let’s make it happen. Sometimes those things don’t necessarily stick around for long. But most of the time, they say give the people what they want.”