Ice Cream Shop Celebrates 25 Years
Franklin Benigno, Jamie Benigno and Jocelyn Hardy staff the counter at The Ice Cream shop. Ready for your order! A competition was also held where contestants could write on a slip of paper and guess the amount of scoops that have been served in the last 25 years. Liz Williams won with the guess of 4326000 with the correct amount being 4293600. Only 32,000 off. (Photo by Soren Wuerth)
By Jasper Fleming
TNews Contributor
This week's “scoop” of Girdwood was the local Ice Cream Shop's 25th Anniversary. There was a celebration on the weekend of April 18th-19th. The community gathered at the shop in old Girdwood for a free raffle, live music and, don’t forget, ice cream!
We came out to interview owner and longtime Girdwoodian, Carol Makar on her local shop.
“How did the idea of opening an ice cream shop materialize?”
“I used to work at a Dairy Queen, ” Carol said. Back when she was younger, Carol had a job working at a Dairy Queen. She would make different kinds of ice cream concoctions for the people that would come by. “Then I went into education and kept that in the back of my mind,” she says.
After she retired, Carol built a home with her husband but there were two things in life he didn't like: cottonwood trees and dogs. One day the spot where the ice cream shop is today became available and Carol noticed it was up for rent. After a day of running with a neighbor's dog, she came home to her husband and said, “You know Bud (her husband), I’m going to give you an ultimatum. Either we start an ice cream shop, or I get a dog.
”A couple days later her husband went to the place open for rent and not a week later Carol was signing a lease agreement.
“What efforts were put forth to make the ice cream shop part of the community?”
“We have partnered with Little Bears, Challenge Alaska, FVCS, Girdwood School, Alyeska Ski Club, Forest Fair, and probably a bunch more that I have forgotten” Carol says. “We hire as many local people as possible.
“Can you describe what it's like working with younger staff?”
“Young people have so much to teach our older generation,” Carol says. She feels honored working with younger people because she also feels she has much to share with them.
“So it's sort of like a mutual relationship where we all have to be open minded,” Carol says. She says many people from Girdwood that she has worked with are very open minded and willing to work hard. The thing she stresses the most in her employees is honestly.“It's like laying your cards on the table. If you're playing a game with someone, you know what the rules are and if somebody doesn't play by those rules, you don't know what to do," she says. “Honesty is number one and all those other things fall into place,” Carol says..
“Would you (or have you) ever considered having another location?”
“I’ve considered it. Have I done it? No,” Carol says. She says if somebody had a good drive and the willingness to work then she would support them in another location. She plans to keep running the shop herself as long as she can without “being a burden to them”
.Cub Reporter Jasper Fleming is a seventh grader at Girdwood Middle School.