Welcome to Glacier

Hello everyone and welcome to the inaugural post of the Glacier Homemade Ice Cream and Gelato Blog. I'm Michael Van Schooneveld (for those of you who happened to find this blog on accident and don't know me), and I'm the owner and operator of the new Glacier South Operation (Glacier Southern Colorado? or maybe Southern Colorado Glacier?). Anyway. I'm very proud to be bringing this great local brand to the Pikes Peak area. A chicken in every pot and a cone in every hand, that's my motto. If you've never heard of us before, click on the link above to check out the website.

I'll take some time to delve into all the things that make Glacier great later, but for now let me just give you a bit of background and tell you what's going on now.

Glacier Homemade Ice Cream and Gelato was founded in Boulder, CO by its creator Mark Mallen. Any chance you get to stop by any of the five stores in and around Boulder, take it.

As for me, my whole family is a bit crazy for ice cream. It's in our blood. Literally. I'm pretty sure most of us register at least 5% ice cream content in our veins at any given moment. My own grandmother, who lived in Denver, had a bowl every night.

My wife and I used to live in Longmont, while I was going to school in Boulder, and that's when we discovered Glacier. Imagine our joy when a Glacier opened right in Longmont itself. Here's a picture of me visiting that happy place. In winter. Probably for the third time that week. Did I mention it's the best ice cream store I've ever been to?

So, naturally, I'm excited to be bringing Glacier Ice Cream to Colorado Springs. We'll be offering fresh homemade ice cream and gelato in our store, plus sorbets, candy, chocolate, coffee, loose leaf teas, fresh baked pastries, and more! Our brand new location is set to open in just a couple months, with a grand launch event planned for the weekend of July 4th.

You can get to us from almost anywhere in the city in two shakes of a lamb's tail, at the new University Village retail center on North Nevada (just north of Garden of the Gods/Austin Bluffs), the same development as the new Costco, Kohl's, and Lowe's. We're on the left hand side of the main entrance, directly across from Smashburger. Here's a picture from a couple months ago that I edited our logo and name into, to give you an idea of what it'll look like.

Everything is going great so far with our new location, which we're thrilled about. I can't wait to show you how it's shaping up. Construction started on Monday, mostly concrete work for the plumbing. Our equipment is getting ordered, in fact most of the major items are already taken care of. And I've been working with our partner vendors to figure out what delicious coffees, chocolates, and pastries we'll be offering when we open.

As I write this I'm polishing off a nice cup of chai tea I made using some samples and smelling the rich aroma of the bag of herbal tea I brought home with me. Later on my wife will grind up some of the coffee samples from our short list and we'll have a little tasting. In future posts I'll tell you a bit about the great local vendors we're partnering with. We want to bring the best of the Pikes Peak area together in one great location.

For now, though, the building is still an empty shell. Here's a quick video I made of the interior after the first day of work using my Flip video camera. It's not great cinema, but it'll do. I'll post updates as things go forward so you can see it all come together. That's all for now!