Customers of Italian Village’s Budd Dairy now have an ice cream option.
Cream and Sugar, which has a brick and mortar ice cream parlor on the West Side, opened an ice cream cart at the North Fourth Street food hall on Tuesday.
The parlor’s owner, Rachel Upton, was contacted by Cameron Mitchell Restaurants, which owns and operates Budd Dairy, about bringing her product to the gathering place near Downtown Columbus, she said.
The well-regarded restaurant company spoke to other ice cream sellers, Upton said, but ultimately chose hers to be the first to sell hand-dipped and soft serve ice cream at the two-story Italian Village hotspot.
The parlor owner sees Budd Dairy as a unique space in an up-and-coming Columbus neighborhood with no shortage of foot traffic.
“And it’s just a really fun place to be,” Upton said.
Cream and Sugar took over a shuttered Sullivant Avenue Dairy Queen in 2014, and Upton opened an ice cream cart under the Cream and Sugar name in 2019.
“I always wanted to own a business, and I really wanted to do coffee,” Upton said. “But I know the (Sullivant Avenue building) wasn’t a coffee location.”
The structure has little room for inside seating, she said.
“We tried to do a little bit of coffee and it didn’t work out,” Upton said, so she gave ice cream a shot.
The parlor serves flavors with quirky and irreverent names like Kitty Kitty Bang Bang (a cheesecake ice cream with raspberry, Oreo cookie bits and chocolate chunks), Exhausted Parent (a bourbon-spiked espresso ice cream), and Munchie Madness (a sweet batter cake ice cream with salted caramel ripple and bits of candies).
Upton said she opened in Budd Dairy with nine flavors, and plans to have eight to 10 available at one time.
Cream and Sugar charges $3.75 for a single scoop and $5.50 for a double.
The Budd Dairy cart also will sell treats like chocolate-covered bananas.
@PatrickACooley
