Dennis and Nancy Yoder, both in their 80s, have opened Siesta Creamery.
Dennis and Nancy Yoder thought their days of operating an ice cream parlor on a Florida barrier island were over.
The couple, the founders and original owners of Big Olaf Creamery, had been out of the frozen dessert business for a while. They sold their five ice cream shops to separate owners in 1990, and even 19 years later, when they opened a Big Olaf in Lakewood Ranch, Dennis had to promise Nancy that he wouldn’t be in the business for more than two years.
But now the Yoders, who are in their 80s, are back in the game with a new shop and many of the same flavors that made them legendary in the Florida ice cream world nearly 40 years ago.
The Yoders opened their new ice cream parlor, Siesta Creamery, at 6575 Midnight Pass Road, in October. Dennis Yoder, now 85, makes all of the flavors with his granddaughter’s husband, Alan Hernandez, in a small back room on site.
It hasn’t been the easiest road, Dennis Yoder said. It wasn’t even their idea to start the business in the first place.
This year, they were approached by a doctoral candidate in a business program about starting a new ice cream parlor as an entrepreneurial venture. The Yoders agreed, but the partner, seeing the difficulty in starting a new business, dropped out about two months before opening. At that point the Yoders felt it was too late to change course.
“I can’t make the ice cream as fast and I can’t lift it,” Dennis Yoder said. “I’m just not as mobile as I used to be. My head says everything will be fine and I can do it, but I can’t. Anyhow, so it’s a little disappointing.”
The partner, whom Dennis Yoder asked not be named, declined to comment.
The original plan was also to have Siesta Creamery be a Big Olaf location and have the ice cream made at the Big Olaf production facility on Cattlemen Road. But that’s not possible, since the owner of the Big Olaf on Siesta Key said she has a non-compete agreement within a five-mile radius, though she said she wishes the Yoders all the best.
Despite the hurdles, Dennis Yoder said he liked the idea of making his own ice cream again.
“In a way that excited me, because I could go back to the original recipes and the richness of the ice cream I made in the ’80s. We use the highest quality, richest cream that you can buy as a base,” he said.
Siesta Creamery has between 24 and 28 flavors, including banana (made with real bananas), cookies and cream, peanut butter, pina colada and Kahlua crunch, a flavor Dennis invented for Nancy in the 1980s. It’s made with real Kahlua.
He prides himself on every flavor, including his vanilla ice cream. If you can’t make a good vanilla, you really have no business working in ice cream, he said.
It was his love for ice cream — and his nearly daily consumption of it in the early 1980s — that got him into the business in the first place. That and something called the waffle cone.
In the early 1980s at a golf tournament in Midland, Michigan, Dennis Yoder was told about a business opportunity in Florida related to ice cream. It was the waffle cone, the sweet, handmade ice cream cones with a nice crunch.
Intrigued, he and Nancy flew to California to see waffle cones being baked on the beach in San Diego. They were so impressed that they agreed to bring them to Florida. Once Big Olaf was established, they even taught concession workers at Busch Gardens and SeaWorld how to make the waffle cones.
“The powder mix came in 50-pound bags, so we would get that and make waffle cones. When we started, we were in the location in the Village where (Another Broken Egg Cafe) is, and people were driving from as far away as Orlando to watch us bake the cones,” he said. “We were baking them by hand, my son and myself.”
By 1988, they had five locations and they were getting burnt out. So they decided to sell the ice cream parlors and the Cattlemen Road production center, which they did on an individual basis by 1990.
“The operators that were operating the stores wanted first chance, and most of them took advantage of buying their store,” Dennis Yoder said. “We were inexperienced, to the point where, as we look back, we should have franchised, but we didn’t have the know-how or capital to do it. Again, being burnt out we decided just to sell them. They sold easily.”
In 2009, they had the chance to take over the former Bruster’s Ice Cream in Lakewood Ranch and to find an operator for a Big Olaf Creamery, which by then had established a strong reputation among local landlords.
They couldn’t find an operator, so they decided to do it themselves, although Dennis had to promise Nancy it wouldn’t be for more than two years. They found a buyer 21 months in.
At Siesta Creamery, Dennis and Hernandez spend three to four hours a day, three days a week making the ice cream. But he knows once season arrives, it’s going to be a lot busier, so he’s looking to hire more people.
“What’s neat is it can be part-time, any time of the day,” he said of making the ice cream.
Dennis is enjoying being back in the business. On a recent Tuesday afternoon, he talked to Jen Landry and Joshua Sweeny, who were visiting from Massachusetts, giving them all kinds of samples of different flavors to try.
He knows, however, that he won’t be able to do this forever. He said he wants to get through the growing pains, the busy winter season and turn a profit. Then, who knows?
“Maybe some young couple will want to take over sometime,” he said. “We’re open to that because of our ages. I’m 85, my wife’s 82. We probably shouldn't be working so hard.”
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December 16, 2019 at 06:14PM
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Original Big Olaf owners are back with new Siesta Key ice cream shop - Sarasota Herald-Tribune
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