A Glimpse Back & Renewed Hope
Memorial Day weekend marks the beginning of another year for us. This past weekend we started our 9th year in business and we are thankful to have yet again survived another COVID year.
When we look back at 2021, the thought of Renewed HOPE comes to mind. We started the year with a road trip to southern Georgia to pick up our new addition to the Dippity Family, our ice cream concession trailer. It was ordered in early 2020 and sat on hold waiting for our arrival while NY enacted travel restrictions in helping to slow the pandemic. A vision drawn on a sketch paper in 2019, was now finally coming to life from the help of graphic artist friend in CA. Excited fans commented “I think I spotted Dippity’s new ice cream trailer!” looking out their office windows as it was just picked up with newly installed decals from JH Design sporting or new fresh updated logo. We were anxious & excited to finally have our ice cream available to the community in another fun and feasible way. We kicked off our ice cream concession season at Friday Night Past to Present Cruise nights and soon celebrated with our Dippity Fans at their company grand openings, company picnics, fundraising events and weddings. It was beginning to feel like how we once knew celebrating life’s events should be and we were happy to be included in these precious moments.
To keep joyful celebration spirits going earlier in the year we introduced our first time Valentine’s Happy Boxes. For those who are asking “What’s a Happy Box?”, these boxes were created during the first year of COVID to bring surprise, joy and delight in 2 different sized boxes of happiness that you can share with loved ones. It offers a way to try an ice cream novelty, a new recipe that we create just for the boxes or simply just trying a signature or seasonal flavor that you haven’t tasted before. Our Valentine’s Happy boxes featured homemade chocolate covered ice cream Bonbites and our new Chocolate Chip cookie recipe for our ice cream sandwiches. Last Spring we also introduced “Ice Cream for Brunch” Happy boxes featuring 4 new homemade recipes: Oatmeal Cinnamon Raisin cookies, Strawberry Lemonade popsicles, Peach Mango popsicles and French Toast ice cream made with Kettle Ridge coffee infused maple syrup. Last January we joined Kettle Ridge’s Adopt-A-Maple tree experience and tapped our own tree. So much fun to go behind the scenes and admire their day to day operation. The “Ice cream for Brunch” boxes were so popular that we offered them again for Mother’s Day.
Soon another vision came to light in continuing to look for more opportunities in having our homemade ice cream more widely available in the Finger Lake region. We not only continued to provide ice cream cookie sandwiches and ice cream cups at the Corning Museum of Glass café so families could enjoy a sweet treat while exploring the museum, but we also partnered last March with Crooked Lake Ice Cream Company in Hammondsport, NY, a Point of the Bluff Group business. We are grateful for this partnership. Fans reached out to us and shared how excited they were to be able to enjoy our ice cream during the summer months while at Keuka Lake and that they no longer had to miss out on our tasty ice cream unless they traveled all the way back to Corning. We also created a Signature flavor with Crooked Lake Ice Cream Company called Curtiss June Bug, a black raspberry ice cream with Oreos. This flavor title was inspired by the June Bug an American “pioneer era” aircraft in early 1900s designed & flown by Glenn H. Curtiss, that he tested in Hammondsport. Later in May our Kentucky Crunch flavor, an Almond bourbon ice cream with chocolate covered pretzels was featured at the Point of the Bluffs Vineyards’ Race to the Rosé Signature event.
In June we were surprised to hear but honored that we made the Travel Awaits Best of 2021: Best Small Town Ice Cream Shop Finalist list and also made the Final Top 10 Ice Cream shops in Steuben County. You’ll now find us on the Steuben Ice Cream Trail.
We were also delighted when Corning Painted Post High School PTSA reached out to us again for their 2nd annual Senior class ice cream flavor contest. Gimme S’Moe Hawk received the class votes for their 2021 signature flavor. A vanilla ice cream with peanut butter, caramel swirl, Oreo cookies and marshmallow fluff. An ooey gooey delight created by one of their fellow classmates that the seniors and their families could enjoy to celebrate their graduation.
As we do every year, we look for opportunities and ways to give back to local community organizations. And over the last couple years with the pandemic, helping out organizations was crucial more than ever. In the Spring we helped Corning Family Support Network Adoption & Fostering Community of Interest, an Employee Resource Group that I co-founded and currently chair at Corning Incorporated, collect backpacks filled with hygiene products, stationary products, books and activities for Steuben County Foster Care & Adoption Services to help children and youth as they transition from home to home. We surpassed our goal of 50 backpacks and helped collect 155 filled backpacks, over 30 full boxes/bags of necessities and cash donations. Volunteers were surprised when they saw that it took 2 SUVs to deliver the entire collection. We celebrated our heroes during Teacher Appreciation week and National Nurses week to name a few and thanked them with discounts on their orders for dedicating themselves and sacrificing their time to care and teach others while keeping the momentum going through yet another unpredictable year. We also participated in Fund for Women Summer Stroll and donated 10% of the evening’s profits to help their mission of helping girls and woman achieve economic self-sufficiency and realize life goals. On National Ice Cream day we joined many businesses worldwide in “Ice Cream for Change” to help make a positive impact in local community and featured CASA Cream Creation. A vanilla ice cream with fudge, caramel swirls and brownie bites created by CASA volunteers. Thank you to all those who stopped in for the celebration. We raised $300 for their mission to advocate for best interests of abused and neglected children in Family court. Also during the summer we participated in Angels Awareness Ride Event at Grand Central Plaza and donated the event’s proceeds to Glove House and Program of P.E.A.C.E (Positive Education Always Correct Errors) to contribute to each of their missions. Glove House is a not-for-profit organization operating group homes, providing foster care, preventative and school based services. Program of P.E.A.C.E , not-for profit organization with a vision to make a change in the community one life at a time through community outreach programs for at risk youth.
National Ice Cream Day
Casa Cream Creation flavor
As the year progressed and Gaffer District events started to return in July with ReDiscover Downtown Corning, we knew that our hope of seeing more of you at our brick and mortar shop would come true. We loved having the street closed to foot traffic for a bit to allow for music, outdoor dining and popup art exhibits. August brought annual Ferrari enthusiasts back to Corning and at the annual Harvest event we featured Toast & Grinds Apple & Pumpkin donuts topped with our ice cream to celebrate Fall’s arrival with Market Street festivities. During the Wine Glass marathon we featured “America runs on Coffee…ice cream” and featured our Mocha Chip, Caramel Latte and Coffee ice creams to celebrate National Coffee Day. We also stepped back in time to the 1880s and participated in Days of Incandescence celebration, with a new created flavor called Incandescence, a marshmallow ice cream with decadent fudge swirl & yellow M&Ms that seemed to give a glow in the ice cream like light bulbs. This is a special multi-day celebration each October inspired by the actual history and rather curious mystery behind Corning’s role in making the special glass bulbs for Thomas Edison’s incandescent lamp and, as a result, it’s role in helping spread light across the world. The flavor was available through the multi-day event and we added it to our “Trick or Treat” Happy Boxes. We even brought our ice cream concession trailer to the Heritage Village Museum and showcased the flavor. A percentage of proceeds went to the Heritage Village of the Southern Tier Finger Lakes Museum.
As you know we can’t do what we do without our Scoop Troop. We celebrated our talented members that work so wonderfully together to make our products delicious and our shop an enjoyable experience with a little friendly team competition at mini golf and batting cages at Park Avenue Sports Center. We were sad to see some our Troop members return to college in the Fall, but we we were happy that they could start to enjoy the campuses as college activities were starting to become less restrictive.
In November we honored our Veterans with a new flavor called Nutty Buddy ice cream, vanilla ice cream with fudge swirl and Spanish peanuts, a tribute to a nostalgic treat that grew popular in the 1960s. And back by popular demand our decadent ice cream pies were available for the holiday season. We offered a Chocolate Lovers pie made with our fudge brownie ice cream and chocolate ice cream with a chocolate crunch filling, a Cookie Monster Lovers pie made with our seasonal cookies and cream blue ice cream and our cookie dough ice cream with a Chips Ahoy & fudge filling and a Fall Lovers pie made with our seasonal pumpkin ice cream and vanilla ice cream with a caramel and graham cracker filling. All of which were nestled in a cookie or graham crust and topped with a frozen mousse and a drizzle of chocolate. It was a wonderful feeling to see Market St. filled once more in November and December with lots of smiling faces enjoying the winter season with their family and friends at our community businesses and at the returned traditional events such as the Parade of Lights and Sparkle. We appreciate all for including us in their celebrations last year and who supported us during Small Business Saturday.
All of these activities last year kept the momentum going. It is you, our customers that help us keep the lights on and our door open year round. You believed in us that we could continue to make our best tasting ice cream and we believed in us to deliver that to you. We thank you from the bottom of every ice cream tub and every scoop of ice cream we dip.
And so with that renewed hope we will continue to keep adapting and thinking creatively on how to keep our lights on and continue to keep making our delicious ice cream products even with the increased product and labor costs, supply shortages and any other challenges that continue to surface in our world today. We are ready for this summer season and our 9th year! We’re excited that you choose us to be a part of your celebrations and precious moments in life. We are here to serve Happiness in every Homemade scoop!
Check out our events page for the latest of where you can find our delicious ice cream and our ice cream concession events this year. You may just find us in your neighborhood!
Wishing you a sweet summer of joy, adventure and excitement!