Although July is National Ice Cream Month, as declared by President Reagan in 1984, local shops extend the celebration of the popular frozen dessert all year long.
J.P. Licks - 704 Legacy Place - Dedham
The average American consumes 48 pints of ice cream every year, according to icecream.com, and the manager at Dedham’s J.P. Licks says this is no surprise.
The ice cream store’s newest location in Legacy Place sees about 300-500 people per day during the summer, said Greg Norton, general manager. The Dedham location opened in March, but J.P. Licks’ roots are in Jamaica Plain. Vince Petryk founded the cow-themed ice cream joint in 1981.
Although there are nine locations in the Boston area, J.P. Licks is not a franchise - each store is owned by Petryk. All the ice cream is homemade at the Jamaica Plain location and then sent to the other shops.
“We make everything ourselves,” Norton said.
J.P. Licks not only offers hard ice cream, but also frozen yogurt, soft-serve, sugar-free, kosher, sorbet, sundaes, smoothies, pastries, as well as coffee, which is roasted at their Jamaica Plain branch.
“We do traditional flavors extremely well and we do a lot of new and innovative flavors,” he said. “And we do seasonal flavors, focused especially on fresh fruit when they are in season locally, such as the fresh peach ice cream.”
In addition to the traditional flavors, like cookie dough, vanilla and coffee, new flavors come out every month, many of them being unique to J.P. Licks, such as the pad thai, cucumber and a Mexican ice cream.
“Often I look at things that are sweet, that might be desserts, or something like cucumbers, which I find refreshing when it’s hot outside,” said Petryk.
His Mexican ice cream flavor “El Diablo,” which was part of a series of flavors known as the “Hot, hot, hot series,” consisted of chocolate ice cream, cayenne pepper and cinnamon.
A J.P. Licks employee described El Diablo as a “spicy ice cream.”
“I thought it would be funny to do ‘hot’ ice cream,” Petryk said. “Sometimes they (the flavors) come from me trying to be funny.”
Not only does J.P. Licks cater to its human customers, but it also offers a treat for pets. The doggie sorbet, edible for both dogs and humans, is made of peanut butter sorbet with shortbread doggie bone treats, Norton explained.
“The Angell Memorial Animal Hospital, one of the top animal hospitals in the country, is six blocks away from the store in Jamaica Plain,” Petryk said. “A lot of the people who work there are customers of ours and they suggested the idea (of the doggie dessert).”
Petryk said his shops are open year-round, but the summer season is the busiest. Despite the shops’ popularity, Petryk said the Legacy Place location is a challenge.
“I wanted to see if we could prosper in a ‘lifestyle center,’ where you can’t see us from the road,” he said. “If they (the customers) can’t see us, they will have to think of us.”
In order to attract people to the Legacy Place location, which is open until midnight, later than the retail stores at the open-air mall, J.P. Licks will be offering a “happy hour” next month. Customers who come in between the hours of 10 p.m. and midnight will be provided with a “buy one, get one free” deal.
“We are trying to attract people,” Petryk said.
So far, J.P. Licks has done a good job attracting customers. Rob Curran, a resident of Dedham, said his favorite flavor is Peppermint Stick. “It’s nice that they have a place in a high-end mall,” he said.
Ron’s Gourmet Ice Cream - 559 High St. - Dedham
Over on Dedham’s High Street, kids taking a break from art camp were lined up at Ron’s Gourmet Ice Cream, waiting for a tasty treat.
“My favorite flavor is black raspberry, said Molly, 15.
“Mine is coffee Oreo,” said Sophie, 14.
Open from March 1 to Nov. 1, Ron’s 20 flavors of ice cream are made at its original location in Hyde Park, which opened in 1980.
“We have a huge variety of flavors and we make a lot of different seasonal flavors,” said owner Ron Covitz. In addition to hard ice cream, there is soft serve and sugar-free soft serve.
As for new flavors this summer, Ron’s is featuring passion fruit sorbet and seasonal flavor lemon cooler.
“Sometimes customers suggest them (the flavors), sometimes my son or daughter suggest them, sometimes my wife suggests them,” Covitz said. “My son suggested the caramel fudge brownie and it’s become a huge hit.”
Its Dedham Square location gets a lot of foot and bicycle traffic, as well as traffic from different schools.
“We have a friendly staff that caters to families,” Covitz said. “It’s very family oriented.”
Although Ron’s doesn’t offer a cucumber-flavored ice cream, Covitz said that his store is unique because everything is mixed by hand. His Oreo ice cream has real Oreos that are crushed by hand and then mixed in after the ice cream is made.
The brownie nut ice cream has homemade brownies in it, which Covitz makes himself.
“I make ice cream for the common man,” Covitz said.
Ron’s cakes, decorated by his wife, Pat, are also a specialty. Last month, the vanilla avalanche cake was featured in the Boston Globe’s Sunday magazine. The cake is made of vanilla ice cream and chocolate cake, with fudge and crunchies in the middle, chocolate drips down the sides and mini M&M’s around the top.
Customers’ pets also love Ron’s ice cream.
“People come in and get small dishes of ice cream and bring them home to their dogs,” Covitz said. “There is a dog that only eats black raspberry ice cream.”
With his wife making the cakes and his son making the ice cream, Covitz says his shop is truly a family business.
Crescent Ridge Dairy Bar - 355 Bay Road - Sharon
On the corner of East Street and Bay Road in Sharon sits the well-known landmark of the Crescent Ridge Dairy Bar, a staple in the town since 1968. And although the business has expanded to include ice cream cakes, sorbet, and frozen yogurt into its repertoire, it stays true to selling only hard ice cream.
“It’s sort of like an old school New England dairy bar,” said Brad Pond, the sales and marketing manager for Crescent Ridge Dairy.
It may have a rustic New England charm with its white painted exterior fit with 1950’s style Flamingo Blue shutters, but the ice cream has won several notable accolades including Top Ten Best Ice Cream in the world by National Geographic Magazine two years ago.
“It was pretty cool to be listed against other ice cream places in Italy, and countries like that,” Pond said.
Mark Parrish is the third generation owner, as Crescent Ridge has remained in the Parrish Family since its inception in 1932. Although the ice cream is not made on site anymore, the same recipes from 1968 are still used.
Along with the dairy bar, Crescent Ridge cows roam the farmland it sits on. Although some may believe that the milk for the ice cream comes from these cows, they are kept solely as an attraction for the kids. The cream used is from Howrigan Farm, an award-winning farm in northern Vermont, Pond said.
“They tanker the cream down here to Sharon weekly,” he said. “But we do all the pasteurization and homogenization here.”
The cream takes a long, 5-hour journey to Sharon to make the ultimate creation that brings so many people to the dairy bar.
Sharon resident Katrina Norman brought her children Wendy, 6, and Henry, 4, to store to redeem a ticket for free ice cream because the kids wore helmets while riding their bicycles, Wendy Norman said.
“We were riding our bikes with our helmets and we saw the police and he stopped right by us,” she said. “He saw us with our helmets and asked us if we always ride our bikes with our helmets on and he gave us the free tickets.”
Both kids said that they love the ice cream, but Wendy said that it would be nice if the ice cream sizes were a little smaller. The “kiddie” cup in her brother’s hand looked more like a large.
The other winner at Crescent Ridge Dairy is the ice cream cake, which was recently named Top Ten in the Boston area by Boston Magazine, Pond said.
Although there are eight windows to order from, if conditions are right, it is possible that you may have to wait 40 minutes to get your ice cream, Pond said.
“When you get those nice days, temperature in the 70’s and 80’s, on a weekend we’ll see thousands,” he said. “The dairy bar is a huge hangout for families, friends, and kids that come back from college who will get together here and see their friends.”
If you want to share something with a few friends, or are just looking for a mountainous challenge, then The Avalanche may be the order for you. The half-gallon container is filled with three flavors of ice cream, three toppings, marshmallows, whipped cream, chocolate sauce, cherries and nuts.
“I saw an old woman order one and eat the whole thing,” Pond said about the container that barely fits through the ordering window. “I thought she was going to go into sugar shock.”
There are 31 different flavors, from the classic chocolate to the more unusual cotton candy or moose tracks, which is a peanut butter flavor with truffles. However, there are not many changes throughout the year, as the ice cream flavors are kept fairly traditional, Pond said.
Due to the high volume of patrons during the summer, 60 workers are employed during the season, the majority of whom are high school and college age.
Steve Ivanoski of Canton is entering his senior year at George Mason University, and is a fifth year veteran of working summers at Crescent Ridge. Although he enjoys working in a fun, bustling environment, Ivanoski does not mind not being around ice cream at the end of the summer, he said.
Crescent Ridge Dairy Bar is open year round in Sharon and is open from April to September in its Holbrook location. The dairy bar in Sharon is open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. this summer.
Sugar Cone - 1152 Washington St. - Norwood
Having just celebrated its first birthday this past week, the Sugar Cone is serving sweet treats while gathering a still growing fan base, owner John Galano said.
“Last summer, in spite of the weather, we were extremely busy. We’re still to this day getting new customers,” he said.
The Sugar Cone, located on Washington Street in Norwood, does not have a large standing area, but offers a gargantuan amount of ice cream flavors and different frozen items such as frappes, sundaes and old-fashioned Raspberry Lime Rickeys.
“We also, for the kids who are lactose-intolerant, carry some sorbet and slush so that they’re not left out,” Galano said.
However, the whopping 42 flavors of ice cream are most prominent in the store, with the possibility of turning any flavor into a frappe. For those who enjoy breakfast even for dessert, the Sugar Cone offers a unique Grape Nut flavor. Even Galano is beginning to feel overstocked with the amount of flavors the shop offers, he said.
“It turns out that everything we’re trying goes over well,” Galano said. “So now we’re overwhelming ourselves with flavors.”
A distinctive option one can choose is a chocolate chip cookie cone. The invention is a cookie with the middle cut out for the cone so that the ice cream does not drip on your hands and instead soaks right into the cookie, Galano explained.
The business is run by Galano and his wife Cori, along with a few servers. Galano makes sure that he creates some conversation with every customer who comes in to the store, he said.
In lieu of ice cream cake, the Sugar Cone has the ice cream pizza, which is a fan favorite, Galano said. The gargantuan confection is a very large brownie with vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, chocolate chunks, M&M’s and cherries. The masterpiece can serve eight to 10 people.
“We raffle off a free ice cream pizza every week. People fill out a ticket and we call them up. Every time they pick up you’d think they’d won a million dollars,” he laughed.
Not only does Galano serve up frozen indulgences, he also cooks six ounce Angus hamburgers, all-beef hot dogs and homemade chili during the summer, and switches to sandwiches during the winter months.
The store is small, yet inviting, with knick-knacks inside the windows and assorted candies lining the counter. Galano is still toying with the idea of next year possibly expanding to other areas, he said.
Employee Michaela Wong had never even eaten ice cream before working for the Sugar Cone in May. Her favorite flavor now is Graham Central Station, which is a graham cracker flavored ice cream.
During the year, Wong attends the University of Richmond, but still spends the summers right down the street from the shop. It was the proximity of the Sugar Cone that attracted her to apply for a job, she said.
“It’s a really comfortable atmosphere. It’s the first job that I’ve had where there is a lot of freedom, so it’s not too stressful here,” she explained. “Everyone is getting ice cream, so the customers are really nice.”
On top of the outrageous number of flavors on the menu, the prices here cannot be beat, Galano said.
“We’re cheaper than our competition, guaranteed,” he promised.
The Sugar Cone is open year round and is open from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. during the summer.
