Hilton Creamery is slated to open in January in Newport News. (Jessica Nolte)
The Hilton Creamery is hoping that, by the time it’s able to open its doors, the Newport News community is screaming for ice cream.
The idea for the ice cream shop evolved from co-owner Will Auman’s Crazy Pops Gourmet Popsicles, which he started in 2015 in the basement of his Hilton Village home. The popsicles were sold at farmer’s markets, concerts and festivals during the summer and fall months.
In February, Auman and his business partners started to think about sweetening up the business by rebranding as the Hilton Creamery and adding ice cream and a storefront that would allow them to operate all year long.
“The ice cream piece of the business is going to be the bones of the business, but we have plans to grow our popsicle portion on top of that,” Auman said.
The popsicles are water-based and made with fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs. They come in more than 30 flavors including avocado lime, watermelon basil and strawberry orange.
“We’ve always said our popsicles are four ingredients or less,” Auman said.
When the creamery opens in January, it will have 24 flavors of Hershey’s Ice Cream.
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“Ice cream parlors are a pretty cool thing that happened in the past — you don’t see too many of them these days — so why not try to bring that little piece of history back to Hilton Village,” Auman said.
He’s known all along that Hilton Village was where he wanted to open the shop after seeing the support of the community for other businesses and neighbors.
While winter “isn’t the ideal time” to open a parlor, Auman says the bills are piling up from the renovations and the community is eagerly awaiting opening day.
“It’s somewhere you can take your family to that might have a little bit of nostalgia to it — maybe your parents took you to an ice cream parlor when you were growing up and now you get the opportunity to do the same thing with your kids,” Auman said.
The creamery will be located at 10349 Warwick Blvd. in Newport News.
Jessica Nolte, 757-912-1675, jnolte@dailypress.com