Loblolly Creamery has slowly transitioned into the new digs right next door to their old front on South Main over the past month. They have kept hush about the goings on, which has obviously stopped no one from stopping into visit. They are ready to make the jump from the soft opening period to officially opened and naturally have events lined up.
All next week leading up to the official grand opening on July 16, which not-coincidentally is national ice cream day, they will transition into being fully open. That means official hours and full menus along with several celebration specials.
If you have not had a chance to stop by the new spot, it is a dramatic departure from the soda fountain setup in the Green Corner Store. Inside you will find everything to be open and bright, white walls cover most of the surface space with an old school pegboard menu replacing the chalkboard from before. The back wall is covered in an ice cream themed mural by Layet Johnson.
The space also features a rather quiet backroom, which is perfect for a meeting. Loblolly says that both the backroom as well as the entire shop are going to be available for rent for parties, meetings, or on site catering.
The big change with the new space will be the large increase in available ice creams. The dipping cabinet will have room for 32 flavors, something they have been building up to supporting over the last month.
“It gives us a huge capacity over our previous space. We now can keep all 12 of our year around signature flavors on at all times, something we could never do before. Plus it gives us space to rotate through additional seasonal and one-off limited edition flavors,” Loblolly owner Sally Mengel says. “The other big thing is we can keep more vegan and dairy free flavors on, in fact our last dipping cabinet is always going to be vegan and dairy free with around 6 options at all times.”
As always their waffle cones are made in house and are vegan and gluten free. If you want to give several things a try, the expanded menu is too much for any one person to work through quickly using waffle cones. To help this they are putting a larger focus on ice cream flights, which are as awesome as it sounds. You can pick 8 different flavors to try, and it is about the perfect size to split with a friend.
In addition to the expanded ice cream options, they are adding a full espresso menu as well, something that should be finalized as a part of next week’s roll out. It will include most of the traditional espresso drinks, the obvious affogato, and a few other signature items.
They are also looking to add a beer license and potentially an a full liquor license for the shop too, so boozy ice cream could be in your near future.
The new shop hours are 11-6 on Sunday and Monday, and 11-9 Tuesday through Saturday, which start officially next week.
“Expanding hours was high on our priority list,” Mengel tells us. “We want people to be able to go have dinner at one of the great restaurants on South Main, then swing by here for some after dinner ice cream.”
For the big grand opening on July 16th they will have a number of grand opening specials, so keep an eye out on their Facebook page for more details there.
