Photo courtesy of Parlor’s.
Parlor’s Handcrafted Ice Creams is celebrating one year in business in Lakewood with an anniversary party.
Husband-wife duo and SMU alumni Brandon and Kellie Stoll began the business with a scoop cart, selling a couple of days each week at events and markets. A year ago, they opened their first brick-and-mortar store at Hillside Village shopping center.
They wanted to make sure that they continued to use high-quality, locally sourced ingredients in their ice cream, so they had to learn how to scale up their recipes to meet demand.
Selling just a handful of days each week is much different from selling every day, the Stolls learned. But it has come with perks: Being open for a longer amount of time allows customers to come in when it’s convenient. Plus, it’s way more likely that Parlor’s is going to have the flavors they want — and have them in stock.
“It’s been really rewarding, really stressful, basically anything that you could think of,” Kellie said.
One of the main lessons was how to be flexible; things change all the time. For example, a quiet week in the winter could be followed by a busy week, when holiday pre-orders start coming in.
They also had to hire employees, relying heavily on high school and college students and neighbors to take care of the day-to-day, allowing the Stolls to handle the accounting side of the business, work on brand development or plan a one-year anniversary party.
For the party, running April 28-30, Parlor’s has three cake-inspired ice creams: cake (almond ice cream with pieces of vanilla cake), Texas sheet cake (chocolate ice cream with pieces of sheet cake) and strawberry shortcake (strawberries and cream ice cream with pieces of shortcake). There will also be balloons, raffles and an opportunity to win two free pints of ice cream every month for a year.
Over the past year, Parlor’s has welcomed new and repeat customers alike. Milk and cookies was a best-selling flavor during the scoop cart days, and it has remained a favorite at the Lakewood store. A happy surprise: brownies a la mode, which was released as a seasonal flavor, became a permanent menu item because of its popularity.
The Stolls said they are focused on maintaining the store they have, but expanding, perhaps on the other side of Central Expressway, is in the cards — no definitive plans to date, though.
“We interact with a lot of our customers, and the vast majority, pretty much all of them, have nothing but kind things to say, whether it’s, ‘We’re happy to have you here. This is the best ice cream,'” Brandon said. “Just things that kind of validate all the work that you put in, which is really awesome to experience.”
Parlor’s is located at 6465 E. Mockingbird Lane between F45 and Ebby Halliday.
