Uptown Scoops prepare to scoop up ice cream

WAYLAND — An ice cream shop comes to Wayland just in time for warm weather as Uptown Scoops will hold their grand opening Friday, May 12 at 216 W. Main Street.

After purchasing the building on Main Street two years ago, Michael and Laurel Swartzendruber along with Jared and Angela Widmer decided that Wayland needed an ice cream shop.

Originally, the crew hoped to open the shop last summer, however, after Jared and Angela suffered a house fire, they decided to postpone their opening.

Throughout the winter Uptown Scoops sold limited pints and quarts of their ice cream in preparation for opening day.

“So we said, you know what? We'll just hang tight, make some stuff through the winter, get good at making ice cream, and aim for the summer to really hit it hard this year,” Michael said.

According to Michael, Jared started the ball rolling for turning part of their building purchase into an ice cream shop.

“I don't know how he got on it, but we kind of mentioned or talked about ice cream at one point, maybe,” Michael said. “ … then we found a batch freezer for sale, which is what you make the hard serve in, and we thought it was a big investment. Should we jump on it and start doing ice cream?”

So, the group dove into the ice cream realm and learned a lot along the way.

“Ice cream is a lot more complicated than I thought,” Michael said.

As the team began to explore the ice cream world, they learned the nuances of what exactly makes an ice cream premium. According to Michael, it has to do with the fat content.

Uptown Scoops will proudly serve small batch premium ice cream.

They also learned about overrun.

“Overrun, which is, like, how much air basically is in the ice cream and why some places do, like, very low overrun and other places do high overrun and how that all works and what the preferences are,” Michael said.

“So it's a lot more of a science than I ever thought,” he said.

Along with the science of it all, they also got good at taste testing.

“I really like the Oreo,” Michael said. “That's always a staple of mine, but just about everything I think that we've done has been really good any.”

His two kids, Nora, 6, and Cyrus, 4, love the cookie dough ice cream.

According to Michael, the show will carry 12 hard serve ice cream flavors, though they will not have a set 12. Instead, they will rotate through a variety of flavors.

Some of their first flavors will include vanilla, sweet cream, chocolate, strawberry, Oreo, peanut butter Oreo, chocolate chip cookie dough, lemon bar, chocolate lovers, and blueberry cheesecake.

“We kind of accidentally did made the peanut butter Oreo,” Michael said. “I think we were just using up some base mix, and I think it was the Widmer’s making ice cream that day, and they just were like, ‘Oh, let's just try Oreo and peanut butter.’”

“It turned out to be really good, and people loved it when we were giving it out in pints,” he said.

The fruit flavors will contain fruit from local farms like Blueberry Bottom and The Basket Berry Farm.

In addition to their small-batch premium hard serve flavors, Uptown Scoops will also offer chocolate and vanilla soft serve, blended ice cream treats called Warriors, and toppings/sauces to dress up any ice cream.

The Widmer and Swartzendruber families cannot wait to welcome guests to the shop tomorrow.

Even though little 4-year-old Cyrus Swartzendruber says he won’t share any of his own ice cream, he assures the community that, “everybody gets their own,” when they stop by Uptown Scoops.

Uptown Scoops will celebrate their grand opening from 4-9 p.m. Friday, May 12 and will then operate Friday-Sunday 3-9 p.m. every weekend.

Those wishing to get their hands on a sweet treat should bring cash or prepare to pay with Venmo.

Comments: AnnaMarie.Ward@southeastiowaunion.com