[ad_1]
When my friends and I have something to celebrate — surviving finals week, reaching the end of a school year, seeing each other for the first time after summer break — we go to Blank Slate Creamery.
We aren’t the only ones. The creamery, which claimed the Best of Ann Arbor title for best ice cream for the seventh year in a row, is a popular spot to mark life events, according to owner Janice Sigler.
“I try to remind our staff, ‘Remember, (customers are) in here for celebrating something a lot of the time, recognizing their graduation or their hard work,’” Sigler said. “It’s fun to be a part of those pieces of people’s lives.”
Blank Slate greets visitors with the scent of freshly made waffle cones and a selection of ice cream flavors ranging from classics like Madagascar vanilla and browned butter cookie dough to more unconventional combinations like watermelon cream, fresh basil and lavender lemon honey. The flavors rotate in and out and the store always includes vegan options, including a nondairy coconut cookies & cream ice cream.
Creating the flavors is a community project. Any Blank Slate employee can suggest new flavor ideas and production staff are responsible for creating the recipes. Customers can also suggest flavors, writing them down on a chalkboard opposite the serving counter. Sigler said in an interview with The Michigan Daily that customer recommendations are especially valuable for the shop’s nondairy flavors.
“For us die-hard ice cream fans, the nondairies are a little bit harder to come up with,” Sigler said. “So sometimes customers have some really great ideas about that.”
Whether customers are exploring new frontiers of flavor creation or celebrating important moments in their lives, they keep coming back. Sigler recalled the moment when she first realized Blank Slate had become a place people wanted to spend their time.
“I remember the first year we opened, we had a little bit different setup than this,” Sigler said. “We had this wall, it was like a half wall that you could almost sit on. It was a little higher than half, and some students were sitting up there, and the place was just packed, and it was just buzzing. And I looked at my husband, and I said, ‘We did it.’ It was like, this was what we had always thought, you know, or I had always hoped it would be — a place to come hang out.”
Daily News Editor Abigail VanderMolen can be reached at vabigail@umich.edu.
Related articles
[ad_2]
Source link
