SMILE, IT'S A STORY
We are a family-run and owned ice cream shop specializing in making farm-fresh, premium, homemade ice cream, sorbet, and other ice cream novelties. Our ice cream, made daily, begins its journey at Mt. Crawford Creamery using their fresh cream and milk. The creamery is a family-owned dairy farm milking 75+ Holstein and Holstein Jersey cross cows.
Traditional ice cream, or "porch ice cream" as we like to refer to it, is at the heart of what we do. It's the ice cream many people grew up making on their porches at home. Our ice cream starts with fresh milk, cream, and cane sugar. We then incorporate the best, most locally sourced supplies we can find to make our many flavors. Our goal every day is to make ice cream that focuses on quality ingredients and flavor.
I started Smiley's Ice Cream in May of 2001 by making ice cream out of the back of my truck at a local farmer's market. This, obviously, did not sit well with the health department so my father and I modified a 12' enclosed trailer that could be regulated and inspected. We could make the flavors of ice cream that customers wanted, the old-fashioned way, with original wooden bucket ice cream freezers and only the freshest ingredients right at their event.
In the winter of 2015, we added a new 20' trailer to our business that allows us to make our great recipes in commercial modern batch freezers. This allows us to use the same great recipes that our customers have come to love, make any quantity of ice cream that our customers want, make bulk quantities of ice cream at an affordable cost, and allows us to operate our business in a more environmentally friendly way as the new batch freezers don't create the saltwater waste that is created in making the ice cream the traditional way (using ice and salt).
Our newest trailer allows us to bring the services of an ice cream shop right to the customers' location. It was designed with the customer in mind, as we have learned a lot since 2001 about what customers want. We can serve from the trailer, or lay down the back of the trailer to bring the equipment into the event that we're serving it. We can serve over 1000 people down to 50 people from the same trailer.
In the summer of 2017, we opened our first brick-and-mortar ice cream shop on the farm of Mt. Crawford Creamery. This shop provided us with a retail and wholesale store, a stable environment to produce our great ice cream, indoor and outdoor seating for customers, and adequate freezer and refrigerator storage for our products and supplies. However, in just four short years, we quickly outgrew our rented store on the farm and had to seek out a new property to provide a larger store and more parking.
We were lucky to be able to purchase a beautiful 2.5 acres of land from the Town of Bridgewater, which kept us very close to Mt. Crawford Creamery's farm, and build our dream shop that opened in October of 2021. This new shop features lots of indoor and outdoor seating for customers, a large commercial manufacturing area for producing our ice cream products, plenty of parking, and adequate storage of our ice cream and products.
We are excited to share our new home with you and we will continue to pull our ice cream trailer throughout the state as well. At Smiley's, you will find great customer service, and a love of making great quality ice cream, that backs our motto of "Bringing happiness to you one scoop at a time!"
Best!
Derek Smiley (owner)
