It’s taken Rocky Point Ice Cream 22 years to find its next great location – but it’s found it right here in New West.
After getting its start in a small kiosk in the summer of 1997, the Port Moody-based company eventually expanded into a larger space in Rocky Point Park. It’s now hard at work on plans to open a second location in Queen’s Park West at #100 – 500 Sixth Ave.
“It feels like the right fit for us,” said owner Jamie Cuthbert, who owns the business with his wife Yvette. “It’s a neighbourhood location as well, which is what we like.”
The couple first spotted the commercial space near Sixth and Sixth a couple years ago when attending Uptown Live with one of the company’s food trucks. They’re aiming to open on May 31.
When Rocky Point Ice Cream does open in New Westminster, it will carry many of the same products that make its original location a destination: milkshakes, sundaes and other desserts, seasonal and custom cakes, pints of ice cream, and coffee.
“For our scooped product, we are going to have a 16- and a 12-flavour showcase so we will have 28 flavours. We will have our seasonal rotations. Whatever we are producing for our store will be there as well,” Cuthbert said. “We will have our basics. After 22 years we know what our top flavours are, so that’s kind of nice.”
The shop will also sell som vegan, non-dairy and doggie ice cream.
Rocky Point makes its ice cream in batches of three tubs at a time at its production facility in Port Moody, using as many locally sourced ingredients as it can.
“Our ice cream – we make everything from scratch,” Cuthbert said. “We have a proprietary ice cream mix that we get from Meadow Fresh Dairy in Port Coquitlam. We make everything. So if we are doing strawberry, we are boiling down strawberries in our steam kettle and reducing strawberries.”
In addition to opening a new retail shop in New West, the company recently opened a temporary, seasonal location at Town Centre Park in Coquitlam. In 2020, it’s opening a new, 6,000-square-foot production facility in Port Moody, which is triple the size of its current facility.
While they’ve attended events in New West with their ice cream trucks Scooper and Rocky, the folks at Rocky Point Ice Cream are anxious to open their new location.
“The New West community has been really supportive,” Cuthbert said. “Even though we haven’t opened the doors yet, they are inquiring. We are getting some kids applying. We have had lots of applications coming in.”
Having signed a 10-year lease for the space in New West, the Cuthberts are preparing the store for its big opening and looking forward to connecting with residents and local community groups.
“We love to do fundraising and have our trucks come out to do fundraising. We do a program for school districts where if the PAC is looking to raise money, we bring our truck out and give them back a certain percentage of all of our sale. We do events like that,” Cuthbert said. “We’d like to get in contact with the local lacrosse and hockey associations to do a coupon drive so that when travelling teams are in for a tournament, their goodie bag they can get a two for one and visit us. It increases the exposure. We are not on the main drag so it will take a bit of time with word of mouth.”
