"Homemade" means different things depending on which ice cream shop you visit. Here are a few reasons why our ice cream is so special:

We are the only ice cream shop in the area that purchases milk, cream, and sugar to blend our own ice cream base aka "dairy mix" in-house. We also use very high quality ingredients for flavorings - with a few exceptions I'll share below.

Back in late 2016, during the planning stages of opening Beenie's, I did my due diligence and researched to the best of my ability what other ice cream shops offered. Of 20 ice cream shops in the area, 6 did not sell homemade ice cream, and the remaining 14 made their homemade ice cream using a pre-made dairy mix, sold from one of about four different companies that make it. Same with the flavorings that were added to the mix to create the flavors.

 

I thought: "how can we make our ice cream taste different (and better) from all the other options in the area, if everyone is buying mix and flavors from the same four suppliers? The answer was making our own base, and literally sourcing ingredients from dozens of different suppliers to make unique and rich-tasting flavors.

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It's more work, and our costs are higher, but we are grateful for the opportunity to be here and make people happy with experiencing something different. Making our own dairy base also allows us to actually infuse flavors with milk. We extract flavor naturally from lavender flowers, coffee, cereals, tea, donuts, and other fun foods.

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I'll admit there are some ingredients we use that others have. For example, our Coffee Oreo uses a common coffee flavor that other shops may purchase, only because it's a taste that some customers grew up with and love. We do make a coffee flavor in our unique Beenie's style, called Chiapas Cold Brew ice cream, and surprisingly, our sales between the two coffee flavors we carry is about 50/50. We make both because it's what our customers want.

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On the other end, some ingredients are unrealistic for us to make in-house. We are not an entirely "from scratch" shop. Some flavors are! Some aren't. We're not splitting vanilla beans and bottling our own extract, but we do purchase a very expensive, pure Madagascar Bourbon extract from an upscale brand others don't know about, and we're extremely proud to use!
 

I could go on forever, but to wrap-up: We're grateful for the recognition we get from our loyal customers that taste the difference in our ice cream, and who continue to allow us to passionately serve it to you. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

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-Tony

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