Dagney’s Ice Cream History

 

What to do with our extra space?  We purchased this building in 2006 to have a space for Dagney’s Chiropractic office when she married me and moved her practice to Salina from Overland Park.  We thought about building out the entire building but due to the high quote we received we scaled back our plans and just setup the front of the building for her chiropractic office.

 

Fast forward to early 2016.  The downtown fieldhouse plans are in the works along with other improvement plans for downtown.  What can we do to make our extra space more productive?  Dagney had the idea of an ice cream store and started looking for good ice cream suppliers.  I made the comment we should just make it.  That way we are more vertically integrated and have control of the quality of our product.  We also thought this would be a good opportunity for our 16-year-old daughter to have a job and learn how to run a business.

 

We began experimenting with liquid nitrogen and rented a big tank to begin developing recipes and flavors.  We had lots of fun with the liquid nitrogen method and even thought about using it to make ice cream for our store.  I even got pricing on a robot to potentially use to make ice cream with liquid nitrogen.  In the end, we found that the liquid nitrogen method was good for developing flavors but not as practical for a real store.  We eventually found a great piece of equipment that met our needs and made fantastic ice cream.

 

We continued our research to find out how to make the best ice cream in the world right here in Salina Kansas.  We wanted to use the best ingredients we could find to make our ice cream.  We visited ice cream shops across the country to observe how they operated and sample their product.  We wanted to really document an actual operation before designing the layout of our store to make sure we had a good process flow built into the design.

 

Dagney found an ice cream shop in Florida that offered a class to work in an actual store and learn the business.  The three of us went to this class and took a class at the manufacturer of the equipment we were going to purchase.  After the class, we finalized the design of the store and sent it to our architect to put the details together.

 

At the same time, we put together our business plan and financing for this project.  The numbers looked good so we moved ahead with the project.  By late 2016 we had the final design, had our permits in place, had our subcontractors lined up and began construction.  The construction went well for the most part other than a few hiccups that always occur in this type of project.  We did have many a late night working on the construction project but we finally had our temporary occupancy permit and department of Agriculture permit to be able to open May 27th, 2017.

 

It has been a whirlwind ever since as we have worked hard to make the freshest and best tasting ice cream in the world.  We strive to find the best ingredients and not cut corners so our product is the best you can find.  We are continually working to develop new ideas and flavors.  We hope you enjoy our creations and come back often to try our continually evolving menu.

 

We post our menu almost daily on Facebook so follow us and stay up to date on the latest creations.

 

See the article about Dagney's Ice Cream in the Salina Journal.