“No one leaves here mad.”
That’s according to the owner of Highland Falls’ Ice Cream Shoppe, Jay O’Dell.
“You just can’t eat a bowl of ice cream and stay mad,” he said from a table in his store last week. He himself was smiling as he looked around the busy shop on a Friday evening. His wife Kristen and one of their two young sons, Xander, were eating ice cream; his other son, Oliver, was playing a game with several young girls at a table nearby; the girls working behind the counter were smiling and cheerfully fulfilling the requests of a line of customers; the seats outside were taken with people enjoying their cold treats; and a few kids were playing with the life-size Connect 4 on the sidewalk in front of the shop.
“I guess you could say we’re equally about both the ice cream and the experience,” he said.
The O’Dells have owned the shop since 2013.
“We didn’t really know what we were getting into when we bought it,” he says. “It was actually supposed to be a short-term business opportunity, but here we still are!”
Their ‘business opportunity’ turned into a family affair. It’s not only that they had their boys, but they found a family of young adults — their employees — who quickly became part of their lives.
“It started out as an investment, but turned into a family thing,” Kristen O’Dell says. “Some of them have also become our baby-sitters, and our boys love to come in here and see them as often as they can.”
The young employees also manage the restaurant’s social media pages (Facebook and Instagram), invent new treats (“the chocolate taco!”) and “go out of their way to make sure everyone leaves here happy”.
The O’Dell boys are very familiar with the shop — five year old Oliver (who notes that the best flavors of ice cream they have are chocolate, mint, cotton candy and vanilla, and the best topping is rainbow sprinkles) walks in and makes himself at home behind the counter, and waits patiently while the workers make him his treat of the day.
Besides those classic flavors Oliver mentions, the shop features sherbert, light ice cream and frozen yogurt; tempting ice cream flavors such as Panda Paws, Heavenly Hash, Cannoli, Piece of Cake, Bittersweet Sinphony and Peanut Butter Chip. They also offer cold drinks, coffee based drinks like lattes, soft serve ice cream, Slushies, and they serve up their ice cream in traditional cones, made-on-premise waffle cones, and in cups.
O’Dell notes that in these times of debate about styrofoam cups and plastic straws, his shop pushes “cones over cups”, noting there is absolutely no waste generated when your order your treat in a cone!
The Ice Cream Shoppe is not only a fixture in its Main St. location in Highland Falls, but they often take their show on the road, serving up ice cream at school events, community events and even private parties on occasion (stop by and see them if you have a special request).
“We both grew up here and believe it’s very important to give back to our community,” Kristen said. “We’re proud we hire local teens, and that we are able to donate not only ice cream, but our time to special events.”
The Shoppe is decorated in a style appealing to families — there are tiny tables for toddlers — but also comfortable for teens to hang out in on occasion. Teams can often be sitting on the wall at Holy Innocents Church eating ice cream, and tourists can be spotted buying post cards and key chains from a display in the store.
They have free wifi (this week’s password was Sprinkles!) and in addition to sayings on the walls like ‘I love you more than ice cream’, there are American and Army flags hung on the walls.
The store is open daily in the afternoon and evening, from mid-March through the last Army home football game.