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Palm Harbor’s Ahern’s Ice Cream

Ahern's Ice Cream

When we first moved to Palm Harbor from Maine in 1993, one thing we looked forward to was a whole new world of ice cream shops. We figured that Florida, being a hot and outdoorsy kind of place, would be a great place for ice cream.

As it turned out, we were a little disappointed. The ice cream we found was pretty good most of the time, but there just wasn’t all that much to choose from, and we found that to be a little surprising.

Later, I read somewhere that New England, a place with long, cold winters,  was one of the most popular places in the country for ice cream. Who would have guessed that?

Anyway, we did manage to find some good ice cream places, and the longer we live here the more we see new ice cream places opening up. When that happens, we fall all over ourselves going to the new place and trying out the ice cream.

Yep, that's me, windowing-shopping the ice cream

One of the newest around here is Ahern’s Ice Cream, located in Palm Harbor on Alternate 19 just south of Alderman. We’ve been there a couple of times recently, and we like the ice cream as well as the people who work there. We spent one visit talking to the owner (and eating ice cream, of course), and we spent the next visit eating ice cream and talking to the very nice young woman behind the counter. She goes to St. Petersburg College and drives a very funky red 1970 Volkswagen bug, which was parked outside.

One thing that’s interesting about Ahern’s is that it sells ice cream made over in Tampa by Old Meeting House Ice Cream, a small, independently owned and operated ice cream business that has been making and selling ice cream since 1947. Old Meeting House still makes ice cream in small batches by hand, just as it did when it started out in the ice cream biz 61 years ago.

Ahern’s (and Old Meeting House) definitely passes our critical Ice Cream Test.

Tags: ice cream, Palm Harbor, pinellas county

Strachan’s Ice Cream

I want to tell you about the “Local Partners” section of my web site, where you can go to read about good businesses in the North Pinellas area. But before I do, let me tell you about one of those good local businesses, Strachan’s Desserts. If you like ice cream and good desserts as much as I do, you’ll probably want to give them a try.

Back in 1999, Bill and Susan Strachan probably should have been thinking about retiring from their long-time corporate jobs. Bill worked for an airline, and Susan worked for a large insurance company.

But instead of thinking about leisure time, they were thinking about opening an ice cream and dessert business — something that they had been dreaming about for more than 15 years. So they quit their jobs, sold a lot of their assets, and sunk the money into a new business.

The Strachans admit that they didn’t know the first thing about running a business, and they knew just as much (or as little) about making ice cream. So they took courses, bought an ice cream maker, and starting experimenting in their suburban garage.

And then they opened Strachan’s Desserts on Alt. 19 at Tampa Road in Palm Harbor. The business didn’t make money for three years, but then things started moving in a good direction, and the company is doing very well today.

Besides making and selling desserts and ice cream, the Strachans also run a “school” on making ice cream and desserts as well as on running a dessert business. They say that no one was available to teach then the things they needed to know, so they offer their knowledge to people from around the country who may want to get into a similar business.

So try them out — it’s worth the trip.

Oh… I started out saying that I wanted to tell you about the “Local Partners” section of my web site.

Go to www.bethfrederick.com, scroll down on the front page almost all the way down at the bottom, and on the left side of the page you will see a little rectangular box with two hands shaking and the words “Local Partners.” Click on that, and you will find an entry for Strachan’s Ice Cream, as well as entries for other local businesses that we like and feel good about recommending.

If you have any favorite local businesses that you’d like to see featured, give me a call at 727-643-7100.

Counters

Tags: ice cream, Palm Harbor, restaurants