Ice cream is many people’s favorite sweet treat and as the pandemic of COVID-19 has been warping our society, just a simple ice cream cone could put a smile on anyone’s face. Multiple ice cream shops around the Pittsburgh region did not let COVID-19 take away the smiles from their customers. Windy Ridge Dairy located in Fombell, Beaver County, is open 365 days a year. This small business is located near Chris and Steve Fischer’s 335-acre farm where business has been nothing but overwhelming according to Chris Fischer. Throughout the pandemic, especially in March when people were ordered to stay home, there was a line wrapped around the porch of the building to get their tasty treat of ice cream! This store is known for their quarts of ice cream that come in a variety of flavors but a popular flavor is called ‘cow pop’ which is made up of chocolate ice cream, peanut butter, crushed Oreos, and chocolate chips. Not only does this store sell ice cream, but other grocery items as well such as eggs, milk, cheese, lunch meats, bread, and frozen meat. The demand for Windy Ridge Dairy’s ice cream has been so high, the Fischers had to purchase milk from other dairies to keep their customers satisfied.

Another ice cream shop located in Washington, PA., which is a 60 year old institution called Scotty’s Ice Cream opened in mid-April but had to keep their services “walk-up” only. An employee by the name of Michelle Patterson explained that they had gone through one and a half times more ice cream than normal. Patterson believed the overwhelming business is from the COVID-19 pandemic because people still came for their full-service grill to eat due to the majority of restaurants being closed. Unlike Scotty’s Ice Cream, Tastyland in Greensburg opened May 30th but did not have their food menu available. Gretchen Kuhns, whose family owns Tastyland explained that they do have an entire food menu, but they haven’t started it up due to the pandemic. Ice cream on the contrary has been their best seller causing their business to be excellent.

“Double Scoop in a Waffle Cone” by Josh Liba is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Twister’s in Bloomfield opened May 1st, but has it’s walk-up window covered with plastic glass. Unlike the other ice cream shops Twister’s requires their customers to wear masks. Even though the plastic glass is on the walk-up window, the owner Jennifer Argenas made this a requirement. There are no worries for bringing in sales because she explained that it has been pretty busy. All of the ice cream shops have been pretty busy, but Windy Ridge Dairy seems to be the busiest. Chris Fischer explained that when the pandemic hit, her and her employees would come into the dairy at 5 or 7 in the morning just to pre-fill orders. They had to decrease their hours and close one Sundays because they could not handle the volume.

With the high volume of customers flooding into Windy Ridge Dairy every day social distancing measures have been difficult. First employees had to put a table up against  the front entrance to keep customers outside. When that did not work there were signs put on the fronts doors stating no more than two people in the dairy at a time and to keep 6 feet apart. With the measures taken to enjoy a safe and healthy environment customers still flood into these multiple ice cream shops to get their sweet treat and tackle COVID-19 along the way!

“Cones of Cornwall (in Southwold).” by alicethewhale is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0