Tyler Malek

Salt & Straw

Tyler Malek is the Co-Founder and Head Ice Cream Innovator for Portland-based Salt & Straw Ice Cream. Since its founding in 2011, Malek and his cousin Kim Malek, have built Salt & Straw from a humble ice cream cart into a fast-growing company while retaining its bones as a family-run company known for its culture of hospitality. A pioneer in localization, every ice cream flavor conceptualized by Tyler is handmade in small batches using the best organic and sustainable ingredients from local farmers and artisans. Salt & Straw began serving eight flavors from a push cart in Portland and has since grown to 30 scoop shops in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, San Diego, Seattle, Miami as well as in Downtown Disney and Disney Springs.

Since opening, Tyler has created more than 1,400 flavors and spends most of his time working with his R&D department in Portland, which designs future flavors and hunts for new stories to express through ice cream. Due to his tireless pursuit to change the way people experience ice cream, Tyler was selected as one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 for “Changing the Way America Eats,” named Zagat 30 Under 30 for 2017, one of the Portland Business Journal’s 40 Under 40, and one of the Eater Young Guns Semi-Finalists.

In April 2019, Tyler revealed the inspiration behind his flavors in the brand’s debut cookbook, The Salt & Straw Ice Cream Cookbook. He sits on the Board of Urban Gleaners, a Portland-based non-profit dedicated to collecting fresh foods to avoid waste and delivering to those in need.