BUCKHANNON – A local ice cream shop known for its hand-dipped novelties has hit the road.
Sweet-A-Licious owner Michelle Jack said the store, which also serves a variety of food, Bonnie Belle bakery items and specialty coffee, recently hit the road with their new ice cream truck. Jack said the family-owned enterprise has taken the new truck out a few times with traditional ice cream truck items, three hand-scooped flavors and two Italian ice flavors.
“It has been great to see the kids come up, and they’re so excited when they see you and hear your music playing,” she said. “It is heartwarming to see their little faces because some of them have never seen an ice cream truck. Many people I’ve met, come up and say, ‘this was my first trip to an ice cream truck,’ and we are so excited about that.”
She said their plan for the first couple weeks is to just go out in town, but she plans to talk with the City of Buckhannon to establish a route with specific times, places and dates. Once the schedule and route are put together Jack said they plan to post that information on their Facebook page.
Sweet-A-Licious also started delivering orders on Main Street and to St. Josephs since March, when social distancing and other COVID-19 pandemic-related measures were implemented.
“The first thing I did was, I marked the floor with tape so when people came in, they would be seven feet apart,” Jack said. “I did that so people would know where they would have to go and that was before they decided you can only have so many in your business at a time.”
Sweet-A-Licious has continued to fill carryout orders and even started a curbside carryout option with a city-sponsored parking spot in front of their shop reserved for takeout customers.
“Anything we have is available for takeout – you could get a scoop of ice cream, or a pint of ice cream and we offer our food options for takeout,” Jack said.
She said Hershey’s Ice Cream comes out with new flavors of ice cream every year and Sweet-A-Licious has four out of five of their newest flavors in stock.
“One is cookie butter, another is called cheesecake euphoria – and that is actually a yogurt – and then we just put out a new no-added sugar black cherry and banana cookie cake, so we have four out of the five new flavors and with any of those, you can either get a scoop or a pint,” Jack said.
Some of their food items include hot dogs with their own homemade chili and Bonnie Bell pepperoni rolls.
“Also, during the month of May, we are going to have chocolate-covered strawberries for Strawberry Festival, and today we just started a new line of frozen coffee drinks,” Jack explained.
And even though the West Virginia Strawberry Festival is on a hiatus in 2020, Sweet-A-Licious also plans to have strawberry shortcake, strawberry crepes, chocolate-covered strawberry milkshakes, strawberry ice cream and strawberry cake so local residents can quench their craving for the red berry.
The new frozen coffee drink flavors include caramel, vanilla, hazelnut, mocha, amaretto, strawberry, raspberry, butterscotch, sugar free caramel, sugar free vanilla, cookies and cream, s’mores, mint chocolate chip and double chocolate.
The shop also does food specials, which are posted on their Facebook page.
Jack said the hours of the shop have varied during quarantine, but for this month, their hours are from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and then they reopen at 4:30 p.m. and close at 8:30 p.m.
