The Scoop on Ice Cream

“Ice cream for breakfast?” Honness asks a family who have been waiting outside for the store to open. Inside, they look over a menu that includes scoops, shakes and sundaes. They order cones and milkshakes, preferring ice cream over the growing popularity of less fattening frozen yogurt.

The fattening quality of ice cream is not something Honness denies. He makes his with a 16 percent butter-fat content, a heavier dose than most brands. He’s not shy to say it’s not good for you, but that the  taste is worth a loosening of the belt.

As Sweet Cow opens another location in Denver, that taste is why the ice cream has seen so much success. Partnering with Ozo Coffee for the ingredients for the Ozo Coffee flavor, and the Hammond’s candy store in Denver for its caramel sauce, Honness also gets ice cream mix from Colorado cows, Sweet Cow smells of the Centennial State: Cookies and Cream, Ozo Coffee, Mint Chocolate Chip, and a rotating blend of specialty flavors like Fruity Pebbles and Maple Syrup ice cream—made from local bacon.

As families smile with their cones and couples feed each other their milkshakes, it’s clear: Ice cream is a form of ritual, steeped in tradition as Honness steeps his Ozo Coffee ice cream in the bean overnight. Soda shops are a uniquely American place where couples can begin relationship and where families can celebrate. Ice cream either enhances your good mood, or makes a bad one, better.

“Our vision is that we want to have the best-tasting ice cream and we want to have the friendliest scoopers.We know our customers. We want to also learn their names.”

Romantic that may be, but Honness is a man who means what he says. From the locally sourced ingredients, to the refusal to use dyes, Sweet Cow is worthy of being compared to a soda shop, a place where nostalgia is blended with that rare ingredient of authenticity.